


The Only Witness

by DarkWolfMoon



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-04-12 22:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 26,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4497078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkWolfMoon/pseuds/DarkWolfMoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two US Marshals are escorting a material witness to a murder trial, but their vehicle doesn't show up at the Courthouse. When the SUV is pulled out of the river, something strange is obviously going on--something that Dr. Henry Morgan might be able explain.</p><p>The story is set after episode 18, "Dead Men Tell Long Tales". Detective Martinez does NOT know Henry's secret, but there is an established working relationship between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Accident on the Waterfront

She had been staring up at the ceiling for hours. Every time she closed her eyes, a bomb exploded, a sniper added another notch to their belt, or another amateur assassin took the fall for their employer. Every time she closed her eyes, there was a knife at her throat, a gun to her head, a needle to her vein, or a pillow to her face.

Any other time of her life, they would have said she was paranoid. She _wished_ that it was only paranoia.

She burrowed deeper under the blankets, trying to force out the chill that had settled in her bones. The paradoxically giddy feeling of exhaustion was keeping her as awake as much as the visions behind her eyelids. She just hoped that the nightmare would be over soon so that she could go back to her life before—all this.

“Meredith? Are you awake?” A wide ribbon of light appeared on the ceiling, creeping in from the hallway. “We need to leave soon for the courthouse. You can rest a little more when we get there, but we have to go.”

“I’m awake.” Meredith Keegan pushed back the covers, wincing as the cool air of the room brushed against her exposed skin.

She dressed quickly, trying to get that jittery, shaky tiredness out of her body with action and activity. Even the hot shower only made the numbness in her bones seem dull. Dress pants, blouse, sweater, jacket… She might as well look nice if she was going to deal with the court today. Today, these clothes were her armor. She left the bathroom and made her way to the light that poured into the hallway from the small kitchen.

“Do you want anything to eat before we leave?” Marshal Valdez asked. “There’s cereal. And a couple bagels.”

Meredith could see that the woman had a bagel—already half gone—as well as a glass of orange juice, a small bowl of yogurt and nectarine peels sitting beside her plate. Her stomach spun in an unpleasant way, and Meredith had to grip the door frame and take deep breaths to keep from collapsing.

Marshal O'Neill, the one who had come to wake her up, had only a cup of coffee which paired nicely with the dark circles under his eyes. She sat beside him because, although she didn't drink coffee, the smell of it reminded her of better, simpler times before her world went to Hell.

To keep up appearances, Meredith grabbed a plain bagel and started picking it apart, putting a few crumbs in her mouth every so often. 3:53AM... The minutes crawled by, measured by the clink of Valdez's spoon in her bowl and every sip of O'Neill's coffee... 3:54... Why did the time go so slowly when you were waiting for everyone else? Sip, clink, sip, clink, sitting in that uncomfortable silence.

"We should get going," Marshal O'Neill finally said, putting the coffee cup in the sink. "The sooner we get the courthouse, the better."

* * *

 

It was odd to be out on the street before dawn had broken. New York had a thriving night-life, but even that had died down by 4AM. The only people left out on the streets were stoners and drunks, stumbling home to their cold, empty beds.

Meredith breathed in the frigid February air, breathing out a cloud of steam a moment later. It had been so long since she had been outside. Because it had been declared unsafe, she had entered the apartment in the dead of night, spent days and weeks watching movies, reading books and generally being bored to death. Of course it was unsafe for the key witness in a murder trial to wander the streets on her own, but the fear they had instilled in her robbed her of sleep.

_There could be a bomb attached to the undercarriage or wired into the engine. We could die as soon as he turns the key in the ignition…_

The large SUV roared to life, thankfully without an explosion. There were no murderers in the back seat. There was no eerie red or green laser point trained on her chest. Deep breath... buckle the seat belt…deep breath...routine will keep you alive…deep breath... _I am calm..._ What was that click?! Oh, they’re buckled… _It’s fine, we’re all fine…_

She blamed the movies for her fear, but she knew that it could happen. She had a friend who had seen the murder, too. His apartment exploded two days later.

_No, think about the end of the day. The murderer will go to jail and I can disappear._

The streets were empty along their route. Far away sirens were muted by the bullet-resistant windows and the cold dark streets disappeared into fog in the distance. A sudden chill slithered up and down Meredith's spine and she pulled tighter the thin sweater she had selected from the meager wardrobe the federal marshals had provided her with. They had decided it wasn't safe for her to return to her apartment, a decision that was justified when the marshals who had been sent to get some essentials for her triggered an explosion. Marshal Valdez—Maya, as she insisted on being called—had mentioned that the man she was testifying against had apparently hired several known hitmen after Meredith had gone to the police. This was an incentive to stay inside, lock all windows and doors, and stay out of the field of view. The Bureau didn't think that any of them had gotten their hands on the location of the safe house, but neither she nor they were willing to take any chances.

Marshal O’Neill turned down a street before a bridge that spanned the East River, a road that Meredith had walked down before her world had turned upside down. There had been times she spent her whole Saturday afternoon on that river. It was darker and sinister now. Who knew what might happen if she walked along its bank now? What about after the trial, after her face had been plastered across news screens and websites? Could she walk the streets in safety when Meredith Reine Keegan had ceased to exist?

“You okay back there?” Maya asked, twisting to look at the younger woman in the back seat. “Everything’s going to be alright. You just need to testify before the grand jury, and they will take care of the rest. You know we’re here for you, right?”

“Yeah.” The water was like ink just beyond that guardrail and reflected the light in strange ways.

“Frank, look out!” Marshal Valdez screamed, hand going for her gun.

The world tilted in an instant, and Meredith saw the next few moments in agonizing freeze-frame. The sides of the SUV crumpled in at her, part of it crushing her left foot. The federal marshals in the front seat jerked like rag-dolls, and she with them. Her head cracked painfully against the unbroken window, and she felt the blood trickle down past her ear. Then, for a moment, she hovered in the air, tethered only by the seatbelt which dug into her neck. Then the car jolted to a stop as it hit the murky waters of the East River.

Meredith had seen enough crime dramas and public service annoucements to know that this period was crucial if she was to get out of the car alive, but she couldn’t move her leg. The water was gushing in through the gaps in the twisted frame, and she was stuck upside down, hanging by her seat belt and her wounded leg. Her heart pumped precious blood to that leg and to the gash on the side of her head—blood that was lost to the dark water.

 _No! I can’t die like this!_ Meredith choked on a lungful of the river. _He’ll get away. The murderer will get away without paying for what he did. Where’s the justice in that?_

* * *

Up above, four men stood looking down into the water.

“Oni ushli?” One of the men asked. (“Are they gone?”)

Another man kicked a small rock into the water after the car. “Gotovo.” (“It’s done.”)

A third man swept his arm to include all of them as he said, “Poydem. Oni na dne reki v nastoyashcheye vremya. Pozvonite Mikhail i skazat' yemu, chto obvineniya budut snyaty.” (“Let's go. They're on the bottom of the river by now. Call Mikhail and tell him the charges will be dropped.”)

He herded them back into the damaged truck that had just sent the SUV over the guardrail and skulked off into the night, leaving only broken glass and skid marks behind.


	2. Strange Feelings

Henry Morgan had been enjoying a quiet morning in his lab. A Puccini aria played up into the support beams and descended again onto his ears like angel song. His current experiment, however, was quite a bit more down to earth. Initial tests of rapid cellular decay were decomposing nicely. He was about to turn the operetta off and start in the direction of the morgue, an equally earthy place, when he heard the familiar creak announcing his son on the stairs.

"You need to get out more," Abe grunted. Henry could hear the stiffness in his joints as the elderly man placed foot after heavy foot on the next lowest step.

"Actually, I was just leaving. I needed to check on the natural accelerant."

"You mean the maggots? You can say 'maggots.' I've already eaten and this is not your most unappetizing experiment to date. Like that thing you did to the dead body and boiling oil. The whole place smelled like fried chicken and burnt flesh for weeks. I still can't walk by that fast food joint without feeling nauseous."

Upstairs, the bell above the door jangled.

"Hello? Henry?"

Abe glanced at the immortal. "Looks like your work came to get you. We're in the dungeon, Detective."

Henry whisked the jacket from the back of his chair and selected a navy-blue scarf from a hook. It had to be important for the detective to come here herself. Or he had accidentally left the phone off the hook again. Either way, it was time for work.

Jo's heels clicked down the stairs until she was at a point where she could peek into the laboratory. "You seriously need a cellphone. This one's big. The FBI have gotten involved."

"I fail to see how that justifies me purchasing one of those glorified radios. When I am not at work, I am typically here at the antique shop."

"And sometimes the phone is conveniently left off the hook. Get moving, Sherlock; we have a case to solve."

* * *

 

"So why are the FBI involved in this case?" Henry asked. "There's something different about this one, isn't there?"

Detective Martinez sighed. "What do you know about Mikhail Volkov?"

"Only what I've read in the paper. He is the leader of the Russian Mafia in New York and he's supposed to go on trial soon for murder." Henry blanched. "He's a rather unsavory character from what I understand. What does he have to do with our case?"

"The trial was supposed to start today, and the marshals had a material witness in protective custody. Early this morning, the vehicle they were transporting her in was found on the bottom of the East River."

"So that's it then? Volkov goes free?"

"Unless we can tie him to this, that's what it looks like." Jo gripped the wheel and suppressed the urge to grit her teeth.

She turned down a familiar road and Henry experienced a sudden and unpleasant rush of déjà vu. A gunshot rang in his ears and a cab plunged into the twilight waters.

"Henry? You okay?" The homicide detective's voice cut through the memory and Henry let out the breath he didn't realize he was holding.

"I'm fine, Detective Martinez, but I seem to have neglected to ask how your day has been." Changing the subject, that was something that came almost as naturally as breathing after all these years. It knocked the other person of balance, so they had to answer rather than pursuing their line of questioning.

"Aside from the murders of two federal marshals and the material witness in an important homicide case, it's been great." She pulled to the side of the street and parked just before the police barricade.

A uniformed officer directed traffic down side streets and several men in suits lurked behind the crime scene tape. They hovered, talking amongst themselves and watching the tow truck pull the SUV out of the river.

Henry watched it emerge over the guard-rail, a great metal beast of a car. Water was spilling out of the interior and back into the river. Drowning was a slow way to go. You try to hold your breath as long as you can, try to convince yourself that you can get out of this, trying to talk yourself out of panic. But your chest starts to feel like it’s on fire and your body forces you to take a breath of water. After that, it’s only a matter of time.

The doors were too damaged to be opened on their own, so the fire and rescue team brought out a saw to cut the doors off. In the front seat, Henry saw exactly what he expected: two bodies, slightly swollen from the time in the East River, their skin an unnatural shade of gray-blue. In the back seat, however...

"What the hell?" Detective Martinez echoed Henry's own confusion at the empty bench seat.

The FBI men swarmed up from the back of the scene, all silently and individually noting the absence of a third body.

"Hanson!" Jo called back to her partner. "Get the footage from any security, red-light or traffic cameras in the area. We might have a kidnapping on our hands, and we need to get her back so she can testify.”

Something about the scene wasn’t right. Henry couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but something was definitely off.

“Henry, you’re needed to accompany the bodies to the morgue. There’s not a lot to learn here now.” Jo sighed and ran frustrated fingers through her hair. “We’ll have to wait for the footage to see if they have her. If they do, we’ll need to find her before they kill her.”

The immortal medical examiner turned away from the SUV, still certain that there was something wrong with it. _I’m sure it will come to me later_ , he thought to himself. _I just need some time to think._

It wasn’t until the bodies were loaded into an ambulance and the doors closed that he realized that the seat belt behind the driver was buckled and slack. Why would a kidnapper go to the trouble of re-buckling a seat belt if they were going to run the vehicle into the river? What if the occupant of that seat was…?

No. He and Adam were the only immortals either of them had ever met. If there was another one, surely Adam would have encountered them by now.

Henry shook his head to clear it. Maybe it was just a coincidence. It wasn’t his duty to find the witness, and he had two bodies to deal with on top of everything else he had planned for the day. He didn't have time to be imagining immortals where there weren’t any.


	3. Not Crazy, Not Dead

Meredith had hoped it was a dream. The crash, the river, the...the dying. Turns out it was true what people said about their life flashing before their eyes at the moment of death—not that it was a particularly comforting bit of knowledge. As surreal as it sounded, popping out of the river she just drowned in, stark naked and freezing in the mid-winter waters, it could not be a dream.

She dragged herself out of the river in the waterfront park, snagging a damp picnic blanket that must have been accidentally abandoned in the sudden deluge of the day before. It had to be nearly six in the morning; she could see the first streaks of dawn turning the horizon red.

 _Red sky at morning, sailors take warning._ The childish little rhyme from elementary school lessons on the weather sprang to her mind like the scent of bad cologne, suddenly and with no indication of dissipating anytime soon.

She shuddered, feeling the chill of the air and the abandoned blanket was doing very little to help. Meredith was quite aware of how exposed she was. She used the blanket as a make-shift sari, but it wasn’t quite working. She didn’t want to walk around New York like this—barefoot and practically naked.

“Where did my clothes go anyway?” She muttered. “It’s not like I actually have many left. Or anyone I can go to get some.”

Meredith recognized the park. It was in the Upper East Side, not that she spent much time there, but a friend had brought her once. Carl Schurz Park, if she remembered correctly. The only good thing about the whole situation was that there weren’t many people out and about yet and she knew enough about the area to know that there was a Goodwill nearby.

A half-mile of ducking into alleys when people came by, and she saw a truck in front of the used clothing store delivering items from a load from a mobile donation center.

Meredith was about to step out of the alley and ask one of the people unloading the truck for help, but the months she had spent cooped up in an apartment with US marshals stopped her.

_And what exactly was I going to say? “Hi, I just died in car crash and drowned in the river, then I came back to life without any clothes on. Will you help me?” Fastest trip to the looney bin ever. And if I’m recognized, they need my identity for their files, that man’s lawyers will seize on that and have my testimony called into question. And then he gets away clean, covered by double jeopardy._

She could say that she had been mugged, but why would the mugger take her clothes? She could say she had been raped, but despite her odd appearance, she didn’t look disheveled enough to have been raped. And most people wouldn't want to admit that right away.

Even though Meredith was keeping to the shadows, an older woman noticed her. The woman went over to one of the men unloading the truck, pointed to a bin of clothes, and handed the man some cash. He then handed her the bin and the woman made a beeline for the alley.

Meredith backed up further into the alley, but the woman set the bin down and crossed her arms.

“Look,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in and I don’t really care, but you can’t wander around dressed in nothing but a blanket that’s starting to mildew. Slip something on and come with me.”

Something about the woman’s voice was comforting. Maybe it was the no-nonsense, “here’s the plan” kind of attitude behind it that convinced Meredith to pull on a dress that was three sizes too big and follow the much older woman to a nearby apartment.

* * *

 

Meredith stood just inside the door of the apartment, holding the blue donation bin topped with the musty picnic blanket. Everything was so _clean_. The floors looked like they had been polished, the windows recently washed, there couldn’t be enough dust in the whole apartment to dirty one finger of a white glove. She and the bin she held were by far the dirtiest things there.

“Sit down wherever you like,” the old woman called from the kitchen. “Would you like some coffee or tea?”

“Tea, please.”

“Ah.” The woman poked her head back into the living room. “So she does speak. I’m not a coffee person either, but I keep it around for the days when my granddaughter comes to visit. Go on, sit down. You’re not going to hurt anything that hasn’t seen worse and survived. And you can put the bin down by the door.”

Meredith shoved the bright blue plastic box against the wall and out of the walkway before perching on the edge of a stuffed chair. Despite her efforts to stay upright and ready to run, she found herself sinking into the soft cushions.

“Here you are.” The woman handed Meredith a mug of mint tea. “My name is Agatha Lansing. What’s yours?”

“Meredith Reine.” Meredith pressed her fingers against the sides of the cup, feeling the heat of the liquid burn through the ceramic and into her fingers. Her middle name sounded like a last name when it was pronounced correctly.

“Meredith Wren? That’s a pretty name.” Agatha sighed and blew uselessly on the tea in her mug. “So what is it? Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Spouse? My granddaughter, that’s her in the picture there, she comes by every so often complaining about her girlfriend and all the lover’s spats they seem to find themselves in. And I’ve had my own fair share of vagabonds and scoundrels in my life. You can tell me about it.”

"It's not like that," Meredith tried to say, but it wasn't as if she could actually say what was going on. _I'm a material witness who is supposed to testify today in the Volkov murder case and we were going to the courthouse when we were run off the road and into the East River, and then I died and came back to life without any clothes on, and I don't know what to do now or who to trust... God, even my thoughts sound crazy..._

"Okay, so it’s not like that." Agatha put her mug down on the glass coffee table and wrapped her arms around the younger woman. "But you are in some kind of trouble though, aren't you? We don't have to talk about it now. Let's go through that bin, see if there's anything that will fit you, and go from there."

It was like stepping back into a normal life. They sorted used clothing, laughing at the raucous colors and styles, trying to guess what the person who made it had been thinking, and what the person who wore it thought they looked like.

Agatha told Meredith about her daughter, who didn’t come around enough, and her granddaughter, who came over too much, and her granddaughter’s girlfriend, who was polite and careful not to overstay her welcome. Meredith told Agatha about her love of pottery and her dream of becoming a sculptor. She talked about art schools she wanted to attend and classes she had taken in preparation. Nothing important though. Nothing that would put this sweet old lady on any hit lists.

“Now that we have a few outfits that you can wear, you should go take a shower and change. You can have some of my granddaughter’s underthings—you two should be about the same size. Honestly, she has so many of them, I think she only buys them because they look pretty and never actually wears any of them,” Agatha chuckled. “She’s not going to miss a few of them, I promise.”

Meredith accepted the fluffy blue towel and followed the older woman to the bathroom.

“You can take as long as you’d like. If you need me, I’ll be in the kitchen making something for lunch.”

“Oh, I’m not—” Meredith’s stomach took that moment to betray her with an audible growl.

“Even your body knows that that’s all nonsense. Let me take care of you for today. Think of it as a vacation from responsibility. We can talk more later.”

Meredith stood in the hallway for a moment, staring after Agatha. Where had people like this woman been all her life? She turned into the bathroom and let the hot streams of water fight off the chill that had settled in her bones, thinking of grandmothers and happier times.


	4. A Little Bit of Faith

Lucas Wahl met Henry as he was getting out of the ambulance with the bodies of the US marshals.

“Hi. You may not want to go in there right now. There’s like some CIA assassin prowling around the morgue and I swear I had nothing to do with it. I mean, there were those songs I downloaded on the office computer a few weeks ago, and I may have not have gotten them from a site that was completely on the up and up, but everybody does that. Is it because I downloaded them on a work computer? It was a slow day and I just needed something to listen to while I was working on my paperwork and I…”

Henry smiled as Lucas rambled. “I very much doubt that the person currently haunting our morgue is an assassin, or from the CIA. And I’m sure that your musical preferences are the least of their concerns. For now, we have some new guests to attend to.”

While Lucas checked in the bodies, Henry entered the morgue to meet the mysterious lurker that had freaked out his assistant. “Good morning,” he said as he held out his hand. “Are you from the FBI?”

For a fraction of a second, the man was startled. "Yes. You must be Dr. Morgan. I am to observe as you perform the autopsies."

“Might I have your name?” The doctor asked. Henry disliked anonymity among the people he worked with. It made it far too easy not to care.

“Oh, sorry. It’s Quincy Cooper. Agent Quincy Cooper.”

 The man was tall and young, a little bit younger than Lucas. Henry's assistant had probably thought the FBI agent was an assassin because he took himself very seriously. The young man would not answer many questions, and Henry could tell that was because he wasn't often given any. He couldn’t have been with the FBI for long.

“How much experience have you had in the autopsy room?” Henry was attempting to gauge how squeamish this particular agent would be when faced with his autopsy techniques.

"This is my first time. But I've been to some grisly crime scenes, so how different could it be?"

To Henry, it seemed that someone was playing a cruel joke on the man. To send him into an autopsy with no other experience than a few grisly crime scenes...this one would probably be down the hall in the bathrooms before the body was opened up. To anyone who had not taken medical training, to people who were even empathetic, an autopsy was a barbarous process that violated the body of another human being after they had died in a mysterious and equally violating way.

The timely arrival of Lucas and the bodies spared Henry the inevitable argument that would ensue if he tried to explain what the members of his team were trying to do to him. Together, the chief medical examiner and his assistant lifted them onto the tables.

“Lucas, this is Agent Quincy Cooper. He’ll be observing the autopsies today because we’re working with the FBI on this case. Agent Cooper, this is my assistant Lucas Wahl.”

Lucas visibly relaxed and held out his hand to the agent. Quincy hesitated, not forgetting that those hands had just lifted two dead bodies onto the examination tables. But he submitted to the gesture of greeting.

“Do you know anything about our victims, Agent Cooper?”

“I know they were US Marshals.”

“Yes, but—” Henry allowed himself a small sigh of exasperation “what were their names?”

“Oh, uh…” A light blush tinged the young man’s cheeks pink. He fumbled with a couple of folders. “Franklin O’Neill and…uh…Maya Valdez.” He gave the folders to Henry for his perusal, verifying medical records and learning more about the lives of the people he had only met after death.

Behind him, Henry heard Lucas busying about with the initial preparations for the bodies, drawing vials of blood for the tox-screen, cutting of the sodden clothing, collecting any items on the bodies in separate bins for evidence and, eventually, their next of kin. That was always the hard part, telling the family. In any law enforcement agency, it was even harder because everyone knows that the reason they died was because they did their job too well.

“Everything’s ready for you, Dr. Morgan.” Lucas stepped to the side, a small grin on his face as Henry unrolled the pack with his set of tools. The immortal could almost hear the young agent’s eyes snap to the ten inch hunting knife.

Henry selected the more benign looking scalpel, though the history of crimes like Jack the Ripper proved that it could be a weapon just as savage. Henry made the first incision slowly, trying to spare the nerves of their guest. He was still there. The second incision met the end of the first perpendicularly. Then the third, from that point of intersection to the navel.

There was a small commotion behind the medical examiner heading in the direction of the door.

“What was that all about?”

Henry turned to see Detective Martinez standing in the doorway, holding the door that Agent Cooper had just flung open.

“I believe he was uncomfortable observing an autopsy.”

“That would explain why he was turning that unhealthy shade of green. Do we have time of death on these two?”

“About four this morning,” Lucas piped up. “But why would anyone want to kill a couple of US Marshals?”

“We think that someone took the witness that they were escorting to the courthouse.” Jo sighed and combed her fingers through her hair. “The missing girl’s name is Meredith Keegan. And she’s the material witness in the Mikhail Volkov murder trial. Apparently she actually saw her boss get murdered by Volkov and hightailed it to the nearest police station. She’s a smart girl; I just hope we can find her in time…”

For some reason, Henry wasn’t sure if they would find the girl, but he wasn’t convinced that she was dead. The only thing he had ever felt with such certainty was that Abigail would not have abandoned him.

For no other reason than faith, Henry was certain that Meredith was alive.


	5. Healthy Paranoia

Meredith wrapped her hair in the fluffy blue towel after she had dressed in the jeans, t-shirt and hoodie Agatha had selected from the bin. The plain underwear and sports bra felt like an extra layer of armor between her and the world.

Then there was that scar around her left leg. She was sure that hadn’t been there earlier that morning, so she must have gotten it in the crash. The keloids scored the top of her foot and radiated up her leg almost to her knee. They were worst around her ankle, and Meredith remembered hanging upside down from that foot, feeling gravity try to pull her free, no matter how much it was damaging in the process. The chill of the river threatened to creep in again, but she shook it off, breathing in the warm moisture of the air left over from the shower.

She glanced at the small digital clock on the counter. 12:13PM. She'd been in the bathroom for the better part of an hour. She may remember dying that morning but she felt more alive now than she had in months.

The young woman glanced in the mirror, frowning at the damp bath towel that made her head six pounds heavier. Finally, she took it out of her hair and let the whole dark wavy mass soak her shoulders as it dried.

Now that she didn’t have the towel over her ears, she hear voices in the living room.

“…and I saw her in the alley with nothing but a blanket wrapped around her. So I brought her home with me…”

Meredith stumbled back into the bathroom counter so fast that she knocked over a bottle of hand soap and a perfume atomizer. They clattered into the sink with a crash that echoed through the bathroom.

Then Agatha knocked on the door. "Are you alright in there? Do you need any help?"

 _You sold me out! I don't want your help!_ "I'm fine. I just knocked something over." Meredith fumbled with the bottles, putting them upright on the counter again.

"Okay. Are you almost done? We have a guest and I want you to meet him."

"Okay." The young woman could feel herself start to hyperventilate. She could pinpoint the exact moment that her panic turned to hysteria.

_Well, the joke's on you, isn't it, Volkov? I already died today. I'm living on borrowed time. If you kill me, maybe I'll just come back again. Or I'll die like I should have died this morning._

Meredith opened the door with a renewed sense of calm. What could he do to her now that hadn't already been done?

"Feeling better now?" Agatha asked.

It sounded like she actually cared, so Meredith felt obligated to nod, her hair dripping onto the navy blue hoodie. Strangely enough, she did feel better. Better, in fact, than she had felt all those weeks in isolation, which was supposed to be safer than this.

She was surprised, when Agatha had navigated her into the dining room, to see an older man with a bowl of soup and a sandwich sitting in front of him, untouched.

The man was not Mikhail Volkov. For one thing, he was too old. The man sitting before her had to be in his sixties at least, and Volkov was a very young looking forty. If it came to it, Meredith was sure she could outrun him, but he seemed...nice. His eyes were intelligent and understanding. This was a person who would listen to her no matter how crazy her story was, and he would give her the benefit of the doubt.

"Meredith, this is Abe. He's been a friend of mine for...how many years is it?"

"Fifteen, at least. You got me into that first estate sale when I was just opening the shop." The older man stood up and extended his hand. "Abe Morgan, owner of Abe's Antiques on Stanton. Agatha and I meet for lunch every month or so, and she wasn't there, so I came to see if there was a problem. Turns out she forgot."

"Give me some credit!" Agatha whacked his arm. "I haven't missed our lunch date in fifteen years and I got a little distracted this time. Abe, this is Meredith Wren. She might be staying with me for a while."

Meredith turned to look at the older woman. Was she serious? She could stay with Agatha for a while. Maybe long enough to get back on her feet, and she could pay back the kindness.

She suddenly realized that the dining room had gone quiet when her stomach decided that she wasn't paying enough attention to it. It chose that precise moment to growl like a bear.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Meredith, but I think we better sit down and eat before you faint from hunger." Abe stood and held the chair for Meredith to sit down, and then again for Agatha. "Who wants to say grace?"

This was childhood again, stepping back into the days she had spent at her grandparents' house, holding hands and saying grace before eating the meal sitting enticingly under her nose. She bowed her head as Agatha offered up a thanks for the food, and lost herself in her sensations: the smell of the soup, the sound of Agatha's voice, and the feel of Abe's hand in hers.

* * *

 

All throughout the meal, Abe and Agatha talked about antiques, joking about how they were technically antiques themselves. She offered him an invitation to an estate sale that had been extended to her by the family. They moved into the living room and pulled out a deck of cards to play poker.

“Don’t feel too bad,” Abe told Meredith after she lost the twelfth hand in a row. “You’re playing with a couple of seasoned professionals here. And we don’t remember how to go easy on someone.”

“That’s okay. I had this friend—” Meredith stopped for a moment, remembering that the US marshals she was trying to tell them about were on the bottom of the East River. She glanced up and noticed that Abe and Agatha were still looking at her. “Well anyway, she tried to teach me so that she’d have somebody to play with and we established that I was abysmal. And I probably had the worst poker face of the century.”

After a few more hands, Meredith could feel herself drifting. Her limbs were heavy, but her head was buzzing with exhaustion. She thought she was hiding it pretty well when a yawn rose up from nowhere before she could stifle it.

Suddenly Agatha was up and ushering the tired twenty-something to a bed, sinking her in a soft comforter and perfumed sheets. Meredith had no more energy to argue and was practically asleep by the time her head hit the pillow.

* * *

 

“Isn’t that your bedroom?” Abe asked when Agatha returned to the living room.

“Yes. I know who has been in my bed, and I can’t say the same for my granddaughter’s. Besides, she’s been through a lot, so she needs somewhere safe to spend the night.”

“How did you find her again?”

Agatha brushed strands of dark gray hair out of her face. "She was a few blocks from the park on the East River, hovering in an alley across from the Goodwill. She was dripping wet and wearing nothing but an old mildewed picnic blanket. I don’t know what happened to her, but I know that she needed my help. You have to know that feeling.”

There was an odd look on Abe’s face, a mixture of confusion, surprise, and wonder. He stood up, maybe too quickly because he had to steady himself. “Dripping wet, near the river, absolutely naked? Sounds a bit like what I’ve had to deal with living with Henry. Speaking of which, I better head back. He’ll be home soon and it’s my turn to make dinner.”

Agatha hugged him as he went out the door. “Feel free to come back around tomorrow. I’m sure Meredith would like to see you again, and I still need to win back your poker money.”

Abe smiled and waved from the hallway before turning back around, no longer smiling. First Henry, then Adam. Was it just his imagination, or were immortals coming out of the woodwork?


	6. Ulterior Bread

When Henry entered the antique shop after work, the smell of warm food wafted through the air. They hadn't discussed anything, but Henry could tell that it was one of Abigail's recipes. It was as if Abe knew that his father had been thinking about Abigail...or he was trying to butter Henry up for one of his schemes. Either way, it was working.

"Good evening, Abraham."

"Ooh! Perfect timing!" Abe turned around holding a pan fresh out of the oven. The smell of freshly baked bread filled the kitchen and dining room as Henry set the table.

“How much money do you need?” The immortal medical examiner asked over the soft and steaming slices of bread.

“What? No, I…uh…I just wanted to make bread.”

“Have it your way.” Henry poured himself a cup of tea from the china pot Abigail had always adored. He was certain that his son would ask whatever question was burdening his mind before the meal was finished.

After they were well into their dinner, Abe spoke. “I went over to Agatha’s today.”

“I do hope you said hello for me,” Henry said, turning back to his newspaper.

“She had a guest over.”

“That’s hardly surprising. From what you’ve said, Genevieve is over there quite a bit.”

Abe shifted. “No, it wasn’t her granddaughter. You know how Agatha has this habit of picking up on when people are in trouble and making it her business to help out? Well, she picked up another one, and I wanted to ask you something.”

Henry set the paper aside. “Finally we’re getting to the heart of the matter. I knew from the moment you took that bread out of the oven that you had something you wanted to talk about. You almost never bake unless there is something pressing on your mind. What is it about this particular person?”

“Well…” Abe took off his reading glasses and set them on the table. “She reminds me a little bit of you.”

“Me? How so?”

“How many immortals do you think there are in the world?”

Henry put down the teacup that was halfway to his lips. Suddenly Abraham’s agitation made sense. There had been enough trouble when Adam had appeared on the scene. If this was another immortal, what then would be the consequences of this new immortal? _If she is immortal_ , Henry reminded himself.

“What makes you thing that she is immortal?”

“When Agatha found her, she was two blocks from the river, dripping wet, almost completely naked except for a picnic blanket.”

The circumstances did sound incredibly similar to the many times that Henry had died over the years. He often wished he could find a picnic blanket. It would be easier than getting arrested every time he went ‘skinny-dipping’.

“There could be a number of explanations. Someone could have played a cruel joke on her.” Henry remembered Agent Cooper. “Or perhaps she does actually have trouble with somnambulism as I claim to. The only reason our minds are jumping to the conclusion that she is an immortal is because I am an immortal. Until we have further reason to believe she might be immortal, perhaps we should just consider her circumstances a coincidence.”

“Whatever you say, Dad.” There was a pause. “You’re still going to look into it, aren’t you?”

Henry sighed. Abe really did know him well. “Yes. I cannot afford not to. If she is not an immortal, then she is someone who has fallen on hard times. If she is immortal, Adam doesn’t know about her yet and we might want to keep it that way. And I would like to talk to her.”

“I was planning on going back over tomorrow to see how she is doing. Want to come?”

“No, I’m afraid that I have quite a bit of work to do. I don’t think I’ll have the time to make it over to see her.”

* * *

 

Downstairs in his laboratory, Henry’s mind kept circling around to the same question: How did I become immortal? Perhaps that wasn’t the right way to phrase it, but ‘why’ didn’t quite work. There were too many variables, too many things that it could have been. Adam had not volunteered any information other than the fact that he was killed with a roman dagger nearly 2000 years ago.

What were the right questions to ask though? Was it a blessing or an affliction? That remains to be seen. But, if Henry were to venture an answer, he’d say both. He watched the people he loved grow old and die. He touched—and saved—countless lives. He fought in bloody wars, explored different countries and cultures. He understood death as an old familiar friend. Dr. Henry Morgan may not have seen it all, but at least he still cared about it all.

Perhaps that was the greatest difference between Adam and himself. Adam was jaded by the time he had spent unable to die. But though Henry himself had lived only a fraction of that time, he could not see himself succumbing to the apathy evident in Adam’s work. He was, first and foremost, a doctor and that demanded some care for others. And Henry had Abigail for as long as she had been with him, and he still loved her. If nothing else, he still cared about the world for her sake because she might still be in this world.


	7. Suspicious Eyes

Meredith woke up several times during the night, her mind trying to convince that she’d had enough sleep, but her body didn’t agree with it. Every time her eyes opened and her mind tried to tell her it was time to get up, her limbs refused to move—refused to leave the refuge of the warm blankets.

Her body finally allowed her to get up when the daylight started creeping in the window. She glanced at the digital clock on the night stand, which announced in bright green LED light that it was seven forty-six in the morning.

Meredith pushed back the blankets and stood, grabbing frantically at the bedpost to steady her sleep-heavy legs. Beyond the door of the bedroom, the smell and sound of sizzling bacon beckoned her down the hall to the kitchen.

“Good morning,” Agatha beamed, shoveling some scrambled eggs and bacon onto a plate that she held out to the young woman. “I figured you’d be hungry since you slept through dinner. Eat as much as you’d like.”

This woman was going to spoil her, and Meredith wasn’t sure that she was completely against that happening. “Thank you.”

“Feeling better this morning? You were practically dead on your feet yesterday afternoon.”

“Yeah. I think I just needed to catch up on sleep. I haven’t been getting a lot of that these past few weeks.”

“Boyfriend trouble?”

Meredith laughed. “I wish. I don’t have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend.” She added, remembering the picture of Agatha’s granddaughter. “I just—I’ve just had a lot on my plate recently. Figuratively speaking.” She wasn’t quite ready to open up about witness protection and the river—and the dying. That was a box of crackerjacks she intended to put off as long as possible.

“Abraham said he was going to try and come back over today, see how you’re doing. It’s nice that you’re feeling better.”

Meredith couldn’t remember being as hungry as she currently was for the past several weeks. She accepted a plate of second helpings and a third glass of milk. When she was full, she found herself back in the living room perusing the bookshelves for something to read. After weeks of Netflix, she really didn’t feel like watching television. She selected a small paperback, Once a Hero by Elizabeth Moon.

“Ooh! That’s my favorite,” Agatha said when she noticed Meredith on the couch with the book. “Don’t worry, I won’t spoil anything for you. Just tell me what you think of it.”

A few hours later, Meredith was halfway through the book, drawn into the main character with the force of an electromagnet. On some level, she _was_ that character. She was violently pulled from the book by the sound of a key scraping in the lock—and she knew that Agatha was still in the apartment.

The front door opened to reveal a tall, thin, red-haired woman. The woman froze in the doorway, staring at Meredith. When she rediscovered her motor functions, she slammed the door behind her, glaring at the intruder on the couch.

“Grandma! Where are you?” She called to the apartment, without taking her eyes off Meredith. The stranger put her hand in her purse, reaching for something that she wasn’t bringing out yet. Her voice lowered dangerously. “Who the hell are you?”

Meredith’s eyes flicked to the picture of Agatha’s granddaughter. The picture was far less imposing as the woman was laughing at the photographer, ringlets of red hair blown every which way by the wind. “I’m…”

“Genevieve! For goodness sake, why are you shouting?” Agatha emerged from the kitchen, wiping soapy hands on her apron.

“Who is she?”

Agatha’s mouth straightened into a hard, stubborn line. “She’s my guest.”

“Oh god. Not another free-loader! Really, grandma? They look for people just like you—old, kind, and far too trusting—and then they rob them.”

“I’m sitting right here,” Meredith said quietly.

“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed,” Genevieve hissed, turning again on the perceived interloper.

“Genevieve Kimberly Cooper, I know for a fact that your mother didn’t raise you to be so disrespectful to others. Now you will apologize to my guest.”

“But, grandma…”

“No buts. Until I forget my name or start drooling at the mouth, you will follow my instructions in my house. Now apologize.”

Genevieve looked as though she had bit down on a lemon slice. “Sorry.” The apology itself seemed sour and deeply insincere, but Meredith rose to her feet.

“I understand,” she said. “My name is Meredith Reine.” The minor lie tasted bad in her mouth, especially after she had been accused of taking advantage of Agatha.

“Meredith has fallen on some hard times,” Agatha explained. “I’m just trying to get her back on her feet.” She gave her granddaughter a hard look. “You may not feel obligated to help people who need it when you run across them in the streets, but don’t patronize me when I do.”

Genevieve, it appeared, still didn’t trust Meredith. She sat down across the room from the woman her grandmother brought home and pretended not to look as though she was watching Meredith’s every move.

Agatha had gone back into the kitchen and, from the sound of it, she was on the phone. Meredith couldn’t make out anything she was saying, but her tone implied that she was at least a little bit frustrated.

“Genevieve,” the older woman called out later, “what would you like for lunch?”

The redhead pushed herself up out of the chair and sent Meredith a warning look before gliding into the kitchen. “Let me see what you have…”

Meredith was tempted to move something just to spite the suspicious woman, but thought better of it. She had another hundred or more pages to go, and the story was just getting interesting. As if on cue, Genevieve reappeared in the living room, making no effort to hide the fact that, as she glanced around the room, she was making sure nothing had gone missing.

Today was going to be a long day.

* * *

 

Meredith heard a knock on the front door, and she wondered if Agatha’s apartment was always this popular. Before she could move, Genevieve was at the door, her white-knuckled hand clenched around the door knob.

It was Abe at the door, which greatly comforted Meredith because she now had another ally in the apartment that wouldn’t feel guilty siding with her.

“Oh, hello, Genevieve. Is Agatha in?”

“Abraham, I’m glad you came.” The lady of the house swept into the room, leading the antique dealer into the apartment. “You’re just in time for lunch.”

Meredith glanced back at Genevieve. Obviously she had noticed the subtle change that Abe’s presence brought. Other people were watching, so she couldn’t openly despise the other woman.

Meredith followed the group into the dining room. She hadn’t said anything for a while; she didn’t feel like saying anything.

“Meredith, could you help me in the kitchen?”

“I’ll help, Grandma.”

“No,” Agatha hissed. “I asked Meredith.”

Once they were out of sight and earshot of Genevieve, Agatha pulled Meredith into a hug.

“I’m sorry about my granddaughter. She wasn’t always the suspicious sort. Not until her father ran off with a younger woman and stole everything of value that the family had. Since then she has been especially guarded around strangers.” Agatha buried a hand in her greying hair. “So, I think it would be best for you to go and stay with Abe for a while. I talked with him over the phone, and he agrees that this is probably the best solution. He has an extra room at his place, and his roommate is a more trusting sort.”

Meredith hugged Agatha. “Thank you. I’m sorry for being a bother.”

“For goodness sake, child, you are not a bother! If Genevieve didn’t look like she would call the police if you touched so much as a butter knife, I would have you stay here. You go and gather your stuff and I’ll dish up lunch. You can take one of my tote bags from the closet.”

Meredith packed quickly, not trusting that Genevieve would be deterred for long. It didn’t even seem like her life anymore, just a bunch of clothes shoved into a bag. This was more like the life some of her friends had chosen: to live from place to place without the promise of a roof over their head.

Leaning the bag against the wall outside the kitchen, Meredith helped carry the plates into the dining room. She didn’t say anything during the meal, not trusting her voice not to crack under the tension she was feeling. The talk around her failed to hold her interest as her mind fell back into the plot of the book she had been reading, thinking about how the life of the main character had also taken a turn in a crazy direction that she never saw coming.

Witness protection was always something that other people—some unknown portion of the population—endured to stay alive. And cheating death—that was the stuff of YouTube, urban legends, and Mythbusters. If someone had told her that she would drown in the East River and emerge soon after without a mark on her…well, not quite without a mark. Her foot curled around the scar on her leg and ankle. If someone had predicted that her life would decay into this, she would have laughed in their face. But normality was permanently out of reach for her now.

The conversation was winding down around the young woman, and she was starting to receive more suspicious looks from Genevieve when Abe was focused on Agatha.

“Well, thank you again for the meal, Agatha,” the aging man said, pushing back in his chair. “But I think that Meredith and I should be on our way.”

Genevieve’s head shot up at the mention of the perceived intruder potentially leaving. Meredith snorted at the hopeful look that suddenly blossomed on the other woman’s features.

 _Can’t get me out of here fast enough, can you?_ Meredith’s thoughts burned like acid in her head. Suddenly the keening sound of panic started to cry in the dark corner of her brain where she had shoved it the day before. _But if I go outside, will they find me again? Will they kill anyone who has had contact with me? Will they kill anyone who’s helping me?_

“You mean she’s with Abe? Why didn’t you say so?” The relief in Genevieve’s voice was almost funny, if Meredith weren’t in the middle of an internal panic attack.

“Gen, you tend to stop listening if you see someone you don’t know where you don’t expect to find them.” Agatha chuckled. “My offer to pay for your therapy still stands.”

“Hell no!”

 _I have to tell them. I have to tell someone. I still need to testify._ Meredith looked up, not quite comprehending, when she heard her name.

“We need to get back before Henry does. You promised to help with dinner, right?” Abe held out his hand to help her up and Agatha handed her the tote bag she had left in the hall.

“Right,” she agreed slowly. _I have to tell him._ A glance at Genevieve silenced her because she saw a glint of something like begrudging trust in the woman’s eyes. Though her real name and life story were exerting an inhuman pressure on her tongue, she didn’t want to jeopardize something so young and fresh by burdening them with her secrets. “I hope I’ll see you again, Agatha. I loved the book. It was nice meeting you, Genevieve.”

To her surprise, Meredith was honest about that last statement. She was pleased to have met Genevieve—to have met anyone after spending weeks cooped up in an apartment with the same two people. Even if the woman didn’t trust her.

Slinging the bag over her shoulder, Meredith followed Abe out of the apartment and down to his car.

“Glad to leave Genevieve behind?”

“Oh god, yes. She wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to tell her that I wasn’t a thief. She spent so much time watching me, she should go talk to the FBI about a job.” Meredith took a moment to run her hands through her hair, fluffing it with her fingers. “So what do you want me to help with for dinner?”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I was just saying that to get you out of there faster.”

“No, I want to help. I’m just a little out of practice. I could make some dinner rolls.”

“Perfect.”

Silence fell between them and Meredith could hear that little part of her brain screaming that she need to tell him.

“Um, Abe?” The words were caught in her throat. And most of the explanation still sounded crazy in her head. “I may not have been completely honest with you.”


	8. A Guest for Dinner

Meredith Keegan’s picture was circulating throughout the precinct in an effort to make sure that every one—from beat cops to medical examiners—knew what the missing girl looked like.

Henry studied the picture, which had been taken as she gave her statement to the police before being placed in witness protection. She had fluffy brown hair that cascaded past her shoulders. Her wild, terrified eyes stared into the camera with a silent plea for help. Otherwise, she was a plain girl. She didn’t look particularly glamorous or attractive. If most people passed her on the street, they wouldn’t look twice, which, the immortal medical examiner figured, would be an asset in her position. If no one could recognize her, it would be easier to hide in plain sight.

But as he stared at the picture, he wasn’t sure why he was so certain that she was alive. Her protection detail had both ended up in his morgue, and it would be wishful thinking to hope that, if she had been kidnapped, the people who had her would let her go alive. Blind faith didn’t make any sense.

The phone beside him on the desk rang.

“Hello? Henry Morgan speaking.”

“Henry, it’s Abe. I’m working on dinner, and there’s going to be a lot of it. How about you invite Jo over so she can help us finish it.”

“I’ll talk to her. Anything else?”

Henry could hear the hesitation in his son’s voice. “Yeah. We might have a guest in the extra bedroom for a few days.”

“Really, Abraham? Is that wise?” If anything happened with a guest in the shop, it could lead to more explanations than Henry was prepared to give.

“She doesn’t have anywhere else to go right now and she needed some help.”

“She?”

“Stop it. She’s a third my age and she just needs help.”

“Well, I suppose I shall meet her when I get home. And I’ll speak to Detective Martinez.” Henry looked up and saw the homicide detective holding the door for Lucas as he returned from his lunch break. “See you when I get home.”

Abe said something similar before Henry heard the click of a disconnected line.

_No better time than the present…_

“Detective Martinez, what can I do for you this afternoon?”

“Do you have anything new for me? We're still waiting on that security footage. We haven't been able to find a good angle. I know it’s only a matter of time, but it something we may not have.”

“Regarding the marshals, there is very little I can tell you. Ms. Valdez died first, before the vehicle went in the water. Her neck was broken by the impact, and there is no water in her lungs. As for Mr. O’Neill, some of his ribs were broken when the car impacted with the water, and it was more the internal bleeding that killed him than the drowning.”

Jo scratched the spot on the hairline above her left eye that she always seemed especially itchy with when she was trying to figure out something that wasn’t making sense. “Hypothetically speaking,” she said slowly, “could a passenger in the backseat survive that crash and make it to shore?”

“Why do you ask? Do you think she might have gotten to shore on her own?”

“I don’t know. All the footage I’ve seen doesn’t hold up the theory that they took her. And if they had, we probably would have found her body by now since the lack of a witness would make the case against Volkov fall apart fast.” The homicide detective sighed. “She’s obviously a smart girl. Maybe she was smart enough to survive and find a place to lay low until she could come forward again.”

“I suppose it’s possible for her to have survived and made it to the shore, but she would have had some injuries. That kind of crash doesn’t yield many unscathed victims.”

“I don’t know what it is, Henry. For some reason, I can’t get her out of my head.”

“Perhaps dinner would help.”

Jo was suddenly taken aback. “Henry, I—”

“Abraham is having a guest over tonight, and for whatever reason, he asked that I invite you over as well, otherwise there would be far too many leftovers.”

“Well,” Detective Martinez smiled. “If it’s Abe asking…. I think I’d like to have dinner over at your place again. It would probably help to get my mind off of things. I guess I’ll see you later then.”

* * *

 

A few hours later, Jo appeared again in Henry’s office, twirling her keys around her finger. “Need a ride?”

“I was hoping I could count on one.”

They talked in her car, but Henry could not recall what about later. It was all inconsequential. Nothing dangerous, nothing that might make the detective suspicious of him or his true age. As he got out of the car, he thought it must have been about work since that was really the only subject they really had in common that filled enough of a conversation to take them through New York traffic.

The store was dark except for a lamp at the main desk when Henry unlocked the door, and he led the homicide detective through the maze of antique furniture to the stairs. The smell of bread wafted down again, though this time Henry knew it was to impress the guests; not because he wanted something from the immortal.

Abe was talking to someone when he and Jo reached the top of the stairs. The doctor took Jo’s coat first, hanging it on a convenient hook for her eventual departure, before taking off his hat and scarf to hang on other hook.

“I’m home, Abraham.” Henry poked his head in the kitchen.

There was a girl standing in front of the stove. The immortal watched as she stole a quick, furtive glance over her shoulder before turning her eyes—if not her attention—back to the pot she was stirring.

“Hi, Henry. Is Detective Martinez with you?”

“Right here.” Jo walked into the room and Henry saw the young woman’s back stiffen. Was she not expecting another guest? Surely Abe would have told her he invited someone else over. The detective looked from Abe to the girl and back again. “Isn’t she a bit younger than you usually entertain?”

“She’s a guest who needs a little bit of help.” Abe grinned. “I’m a sucker for hard luck cases. Like Henry.”

“Abraham…” Dr. Morgan seriously considered smacking his adopted son, but he was too far away.

“Henry, you and Jo go sit at the table. We’ll bring the food.”

Henry hadn’t seen much of the girl—just the bushy brown hair gathered in a loose braid, the two sizes too large blue blouse paired with a green bohemian style skirt. She wore black flats which looked like they were on their last legs and was remarkable unadorned for her age. Most other people in their early twenties as he guessed her to be, had tattoos, bracelets, and other visible accessories. People probably thought she was older than she looked.

Dr. Morgan pulled Jo’s chair out for her, an engrained gesture from a different time, before settling into his own. Many of the dishes were already on the table, and Abe brought a bowl of mashed potatoes over not long after they sat down. Then the guest approached, her eyes determinedly focused on the basket of dinner rolls she held. She set it down on the table and sat down as Abe arrived with the roast.

“We don’t stand much on ceremony here,” Abe said as he, Jo, and Henry all started reaching for the food, clearly addressing the younger girl. “But I know enough to follow Agatha’s rules in her own house.”

“Are you going to introduce us?” Henry asked, surprised that his son had forgotten that bit of decorum.

The young woman, for the first time Henry realized, looked up and brushed a lock of hair out of her face. “My name is Meredith Keegan.”

Silverware clattered to the table as dinner and work collided in a most unpleasant way. It seemed Henry had been wrong about the bread being free of ulterior motives.

“Any questions you may have,” Abe cut in, “can wait until after supper.”


	9. A Corpse Out of Water

Meredith could feel their eyes on her while she ate. More than at Agatha’s place, every bite felt impossible, all the borrowed time she was living on weighing in the roast and mashed potatoes in her mouth. But the detective’s eyes were boring into her. When Abe had told her that he was going to invite a police detective over for dinner, she hadn’t honestly known what to expect. She was secretly glad that the older man had insisted that they put off the topic of her survival off until the meal was inside them.

But she could tell they were finding it hard not to ask the questions. She certainly hadn’t told Abe everything—just enough to get her to the police without running into a psychiatrist first. She spoke up a few times, living in the promise of polite conversation to the end of the meal. But even Henry was staring at her without really looking, a look she knew because she had mastered it while living with US marshals who didn’t always bother to conceal their weapons. She would watch as Marshal O’Neil’s coat flapped back, revealing the side arm tucked in a shoulder holster.

Above all else, this meal could not continue indefinitely.

“I believe I’m finished,” Meredith announced. “And perhaps I am ready to answer your questions.”

She somehow managed to say it with far more confidence than she felt. Her knees shook as she stood up from the table and carried her plate to the sink. Weeks of glancing over her shoulder had turned into the ability to feel that the detective was approaching her without actually looking back.

“Shall we go into the living room to talk?” Detective Martinez asked, putting her dirty dishes in the sink as well.

“Yes.” Her voice was steadier than she expected it to be. _Maybe I can tell the truth this time…_

The living room was a cozy corner near the stairs with a couch and a couple overstuffed chairs. It was surrounded by cloudy windows, though Meredith noted the distinct lack of pictures. In a way, it was like her apartment before it had blown up; she had few family members to immortalize in picture frames and few friends to pose drunk with her. When she thought about it, she was the perfect kind of person to go into Witness protection. She didn’t have any loose ends to keep her anywhere in particular.

“Can you tell me what happened?” the detective asked, sitting down on the couch across from the younger woman.

“It’s a bit complicated.”

Jo smiled. “It’s my job to sort everything out. You just need to tell me whatever happened.”

 _No, it’s a little more complicated than that._ “We left the apartment where we’d been staying for several weeks awaiting the trial at about four in the morning. I hadn’t been sleeping very well lately, and Marshal O’Neil told me that I would have a chance to sleep after we made it to the courthouse. We were driving along the East River when Maya—I mean, Marshal Valdez—yells and suddenly the vehicle was in the water.”

Meredith realized that her breathing was coming in gasps only when the homicide detective put her hand on the girl’s arm. Slowly, she started taking deeper and deeper breaths to calm her fluttering heart down.

“You can take as long as you need.”

“No, it’s okay,” Meredith’s breath hitched on a lump in her throat as she uttered the lie. “I don’t remember much else—just waking up in a park dripping wet around dawn. I think I might have blacked out or something.”

She caught the questioning look from Abe as he was clearing the table. Apparently he knew that she was omitting certain details from the story, specifically that she was naked when she woke up. Agatha must have mentioned it.

“You don’t know how you got out of the car or who it was that hit you?”

“All I remember before waking up in the park is thinking that Mikhail Volkov would go free because I was about to die.” Perhaps her voice was too firm, but that one detail held her with such weight compared to the hazy recollections of the crash itself. That moment of blind panic when the only thought in her mind was that a murderer would be free to kill again, that moment was carved into the back of her skull and branded on the insides of her eyelids.

“Why didn’t you come in immediately? It’s been almost two days. We thought you might have been kidnapped and killed.”

Although she had been expecting this question, Meredith had yet to figure out an answer for it. “I don’t know. I think I just needed time. I mean, I survived something that the Mythbusters say is damn near impossible. And I didn’t understand what was going on or why. I still don’t.”

“Are you still going to testify?”

“Yes.” That was really the only thing about the past few days that she was certain of. No matter what happened, she was going to get to that trial and put that bastard away for life.

“I feel I should warn you: the FBI are involved in this case too. They might ask you some of the same questions. Can you tell me where you’ve been for the past couple days?”

Meredith straightened, her spine going rigid at the thought of putting Agatha in danger. “Do I need to tell you? I don’t want to get her in trouble. She didn’t kidnap me or anything; she was just taking care of me. She doesn’t even know who I really am.”

“Okay, we can probably leave her out of all this.” An expression Meredith couldn’t read crossed the NYPD detective’s face. “Were you hurt in the crash?”

 _Here it is. This is where all my lies are going to come back and bite me in the ass._ “I thought I remembered hitting my head, but when I woke up on the shore, it didn’t hurt.”

The scars around her left leg started itching, as if punishing her for the lie of omission she was committing by not bringing them into the conversation. But it looked more like a contact rash than scarring, as if she had hives rather than a leg that had been crushed and quickly mended through magic or science fiction.

“I guess the only question that needs answered now is what to do.” Jo buried a hand in her hair and fluffed it. “We could go to the station now, but that would mean putting you back in protective custody right away, and it didn’t turn out so well the last time. For now, I think we need to keep this as contained as we can. Where were you going to stay tonight?”

“Here. Agatha asked Abe if it was alright because her granddaughter didn’t like me.”

It looked as if Detective Martinez was weighing her options as she lapsed into silence. Meredith could almost hear the argument that was taking place in the other woman’s head.

“There’s dessert if anyone wants it,” Abe called from the kitchen.

Meredith stood, but looked to Jo before going anywhere. The detective waved her on towards the kitchen, lost in her own thoughts.

Dr. Morgan was already there, accepting a piece of cherry pie from Abe. “Ah, Ms. Keegan. I was hoping I might get a chance to speak with you.” He set his pie down on the table before continuing. “I am primarily a medical examiner, but I am also a certified doctor, and I wonder if I might examine you for any injuries you might have sustained in the collision.”

Meredith nodded. She knew the request was more of a formality than a request because if he really wanted to check for injuries, there were probably certain protocols he could invoke to coerce her. It was nice that he was actually asking though, which was probably more than she would have gotten from an ER doctor.

 _I wonder if he’ll be able to tell that I actually died in the car and was somehow brought back to life_. She pushed the thought down, assuring herself that the only mark on her, without extensive testing he probably couldn’t do here, was the scarring on her leg. That was the only overt souvenir from an early morning dive into the East River.

“If you’ll just make yourself comfortable…” His voice trailed off as he retrieved a medical bag. An actual medical bag like the ones doctors would carry with them when making house calls, a practice that had gone much out of fashion decades ago. The bag was well worn, an antique possibly, like many of the other curiosities in the shop. But unlike the desk and cabinets and bureaus on the street level floor, this bag was actually being used.

He drew a stethoscope from the bag, then a blood pressure cuff. As she followed his instructions—“Take a deep breath. Good. Now another. Excellent…”—it was starting to feel like a mundane checkup. Sometimes he would mutter things to himself that she couldn’t quite decipher. He took out a mercury thermometer next and had her place it beneath her tongue. A small hammer for testing reflexes appeared from the depths of the bag, as well as the strange tool used for examining ears.

Meredith realized the exact moment that Dr. Morgan caught sight of the scars. He was testing the reflexes in her legs and, although there didn’t appear to be anything wrong with them, he noticed the slightly raised scars wrapping around her left ankle and up her leg.

He glanced up at her, then back down at her leg. “May I look at this?” he asked, ever polite.

Meredith nodded. She had been expecting him to notice it soon, but she still felt guilty because the scar was the mark telling her that she should have stayed dead.

“Do you remember how you got this? It looks fairly recent.”

As she shook her head, she was convinced that the doctor could read the lie in her eyes.

“Meredith?” Detective Martinez appeared in the kitchen. “I think you should come over and stay at my place.

 _I thought that was what she was considering._ It made sense that a key witness in a murder trial would only bring danger to the people she was staying with, and the NYPD detective was obviously far more willing to shoulder the risk than to allow Abe and Henry to bear it.

“For someone who went through a traumatic accident, you seem to be in perfect health. I wish you more good health, and luck in trial.”

* * *

 

A few minutes later, Meredith was climbing into the detective’s car carrying the tote bag she had packed at Agatha’s earlier that day.

“Is that all you have?”

“Yeah. Murderers don’t tend to care if you have things of sentimental value.” Meredith was surprised by the bitterness in her own voice. “Everything else I had is either at the apartment where I stayed with the marshals or blown to high heaven when they tried to get some things from my actual apartment. They booby trapped it hoping to catch me.”

“I’m sorry.”

Meredith sat back and stared out the window, watching the neighborhood pass by. It wasn’t the detective’s fault that any of this was happening to her; it was Mikhail Volkov’s fault. And with luck, he would be out of the picture soon.


	10. Nasty Surprise

After Detective Martinez left with the mysterious Meredith Keegan, Henry collapsed into a chair, deep in thought. She was in perfect health, better even than she should have been considering that she must have had weeks of inactivity and the crash had been severe enough to snap the neck of one of the marshals on impact. If nothing else, the young woman should have had a head injury from colliding with the window. But she didn't even have a mark.

And then there were those peculiar scars around her foot and ankle. It looked as if her foot had been mangled quite badly, and fairly recently. It was new scar tissue.

She certainly wouldn’t have come to such harm while with the marshals, and they had no injuries other than the ones sustained in death. No matter how much he tried to stop himself from coming to that conclusion, there was no other explanation. Meredith Keegan must be immortal.

“Abraham, do you suppose I will get to speak to Miss Keegan again? I think there are some things we need to discuss with her.”

Abe looked at his father over his reading glasses. “I assume that it’s not just her sparkling personality that has captured your attention.”

“Would that it were. It would certainly make some things easier for all of us. While she is a delightful person, if a bit reserved, I wish it wasn’t necessary to warn her about Adam.”

His book now abandoned, Abe sat forward in his chair. “So you’re certain that she immortal?”

“Not certain, but I have enough reasons to doubt that she is an ordinary mortal.”

The phone rang at that moment, cutting through any response Abe might have given his father. The septuagenarian picked up the receiver and answered in his cordial business tone.

“Hello? Abe’s Antiques, Abe speaking.”

A frown appeared on his son’s face and Henry could see the worry in his soul when their eyes locked. Abraham took the phone from his ear and pressed it against his shoulder. “I think it’s Adam.”

Henry took the phone. If it was Adam, Henry was the only one he wanted to talk to, and Abe was merely a conduit. “Hello?”

“Hello, Henry.” The smooth voice didn’t sound menacing, but the immortal doctor was keenly aware of the danger this other man’s existence posed to the people around him. “I heard you were working on a case with a rather interesting complication: a missing body. That’s a problem we normally create.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come now, Henry. You of all people must know that I have lived long enough to tell when people are lying. I occupy my time in circles where knowledge is at a premium and the people I work with have long since learned that it is not a very good idea to approach me with anything less than the truth.” Adam let out a small laugh before his tone became serious again. “So what is it?”

“Leave her alone.” The vehemence in Henry’s voice startled him. He hardly knew Miss Keegan but he did know Adam. The older immortal had a violent kind of curiosity and he had already demonstrated that he was not above putting others’ lives at risk in order to achieve his own ends. The face of the man he had killed drifted into his head.

“Now, now, Henry. No need to get so upset. It’s a woman, you say? How very interesting. I haven’t met a female immortal yet.” Henry stiffened at the sound of Adam’s dark chuckle. “You should be careful around her, Henry. People in Witness Protection tend to still have people after them—people who would notice that their victims aren’t staying dead.”

The line disconnected, leaving Henry with questions and more than a little anxiety. Somehow Adam already knew about Meredith, and about the case that he and Jo—as well as the FBI—were working on.

“Let me guess,” Abe said, reading the fear on his father’s face. “He already knows about Meredith.” He rubbed his forehead in exasperation and Henry could see that the anxiety he felt was catching. “Does he plan to do anything about her? Do we need to call Jo?”

“I’m not sure,” Dr. Morgan admitted. “He didn’t say anything about the girl except that he knew she was in Witness Protection and that her life might still be in danger.” A sudden and unpleasant realization dawned on him. “I think there might be a mole in the investigation.”

“Why? And how, with the FBI involved?”

“Adam said that he heard about the case from a source. Someone on site at the crash—someone who knew that Meredith was supposed to die in that crash—I think they’re searching the city to make her disappear before anyone finds her.”

Abe grabbed the phone and started dialing. “We need to tell Jo.”

“Wait! What are we supposed to tell her? As far as the NYPD are concerned, the man who was stalking me is dead. And Adam, another immortal who would probably be willing to reveal my secret before slitting his own throat to escape custody, isn’t exactly in our address book. Nor would he be easy to find or forthcoming about his sources.” Henry held down the button in the receiver’s cradle. “We don’t have any proof; it’s all conjecture at this point.”

“She could be walking into a trap tomorrow morning,” Abe shouted. “Don’t you care about that?” The elderly man thrust the phone at Henry, angrier than the immortal had seen him in many years. “She trusts you. If nothing else, just ask her to trust you on this. You can tell her the truth, you can withhold something, or you can lie. Just tell her!”

Henry accepted the receiver. _Just ask her to trust me. It’s not that easy._ But he dialed anyway.

“Hello?” Jo’s voice sounded tired, though thankfully not as if he had woken her up.

“Jo, it’s Henry.” He honestly didn’t know what he was going to say next.

“Henry? Jeez, it’s almost one in the morning! Can’t this wait?”

“You know I wouldn’t call you unless it was really important. Who have you told about Meredith? Does anyone know that she’s with you?”

“No one yet. It was late; I didn’t want to interrupt Hanson or the lieutenant since they were already off duty. And I figured the FBI agents were doing whatever the hell FBI agents do when they’re off the clock. Why?” He could hear in her voice as she sat up straighter.

“I think there might be a mole in the investigation.”

“What? Do you have any proof?”

Henry grimaced. “No, I don’t have any physical proof. It’s slightly more than a hunch, but there isn’t enough evidence for it to be a fact.”

“Henry, I can’t go to Reece with one of your hunches, good as they usually are. Not about this. Can you give me any more details?”

“I’m afraid not. What I have is merely conjecture from a statement made by someone over the phone. The names I know him by are almost certainly fake, I have no way to set up a meeting, or even to verify that he even has the information he claims to have. I do not even wish to have a rapport with the man, and for reasons beyond my control, cannot break contact with him. But he knows certain things about the investigation that were kept secret and claims that someone on the investigation knows that Meredith should have died in that car, someone that is willing to pay to make sure she doesn’t reappear alive.”

“I still can’t go to Lieutenant Reece with this.” Jo sighed. “Look, Henry, I’m a police officer. And this is just part of the hazards of the career.”

“I understand that, detective. I have two fresh bodies in the morgue that bear that point out quite well. But this isn’t just about your life or mine. This is about Meredith’s. She certainly didn’t sign up for these hazards—as you call them—and she is the one that will die if we don’t take every precaution.”

“I’ll be careful. I promise. And I’ll keep what you said in mind; your hunches have yet to fail me.” There was a long, exhausted-sounding yawn from her end. “Now I need to go to bed if I’m supposed to be able to protect Meredith tomorrow. Goodnight, Henry.”

This was all he was going to get—no investigation for the mole, no protection details to see the prosecution’s only witness to the precinct from the NYPD detective’s house. “Goodnight, Detective Martinez.”

Abe had left the room some time ago, and now Henry went to look for him. He was certain the older man was still awake first because the conversation hadn’t been that long, and second because Abraham was never one to turn in early. He more or less set his own hours in the shop downstairs, and could afford to sleep in late. As expected, he was in his favorite corner holding a book. He looked over his reading glasses at his father when Henry stepped into the room.

“So how did it go?” he asked, doing very little to keep the smug tone out of his voice.

“She says she’ll be careful, but she can’t approach Lieutenant Reece with one of my theories.” Henry had to admit that Abe had been right—Jo did trust him. Any other police officer would have listened to his conjecture and dismissed it as paranoia.

“That’s better than it could be. At least she knows now to watch her back.”

“Yes,” the immortal conceded, “but now she has to watch her own back and the girl’s besides, not to mention their fronts as well.”

Abe took off his glasses and set them down on the end table beside him. “Dad, I love you, but you are not Superman. You can’t protect everyone all the time. They should be safe tonight. Worry about them in the morning.”

* * *

 

Henry lay awake in bed staring at the ceiling and willing the minutes to pass by faster. While he was confident that Jo and Meredith would be safe for the night, as Abe had convinced him, the morning held more unknowns than the immortal could remember complicating his life in a long time.

_What if she calls the exact person who wants to kill the girl? No, she would call Lieutenant Reece first, and I’m certain we can trust her. And Detective Hanson. But we don’t know any of the FBI agents. They can’t all be moles, but there could be more than one._

The probabilities of alerting the mole to Meredith’s survival were calculating in his sleepless brain, endless permutations playing out into the worst possible scenarios. After all, someone with the gall to infiltrate the FBI and kill two federal marshals to take out one witness could be capable of anything, especially four or five more murders.

He didn’t realize when he drifted off to sleep because the images kept coming.

_Jo was bleeding out on the sidewalk from a gunshot wound—no, a stab wound—no, she was drowning in the river like the marshals._

_Everything moved so slowly under the water. The detective looked at Henry; her wide, dark, frightened eyes locking with his. He could feel the weight of the water burning in his lungs, streams of bubbles escaping the corners of his mouth. At this rate, he would die before her and be resurrected too far to help her._

_There was no escape. His eyes were quickly being hemmed in by that fuzzy darkness before he died of suffocation. Jo reached for him just as his heart stopped._

Henry awoke from the dream, gasping in air, disoriented for a few moments of panic in which he thought Jo was dying in the river and he had disappeared in front of her. He slowed his breathing, taking deeper and deeper breaths until his heart calmed down. Jo was in her bed in her house, just as he was in his.

He glanced at the clock—shortly after three in the morning. Henry knew that he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep now, not with such dreams hovering on the other side of the veil. He lay back, staring at the ceiling and waiting for dawn to appear on the horizon.


	11. The Nightmare Revisited

Meredith saw a return of the sleepless nights at Detective Jo Martinez's house. She had slipped into slumber fairly easily, but was woken by nightmares that forced her to relive her death. The sweat on her forehead seemed like water when she woke from dreams of blood and the bottom of the river. There was a phantom pain in her side and another sharper one in her leg. Both were places she had been injured in the crash, and the memory from the dream brought them back into her reality.

_At least it's a different room._ Having spent several sleepless weeks in the same room, staring up at the same ceiling when she couldn't be satiated by Netflix or Hulu, she had memorized every corner, every detail of her previous bedroom. Which would have been fine if she were to keep that room for a while. But she knew she wasn't going to be going back there, so it was more like an over-extended stay in a hotel room.

Meredith sat up, feeling the return of the dizzy wakeful exhaustion. At least she got some sleep this time. A quick glance at the clock confirmed that it was too early to talk to Detective Martinez. She didn't think the woman would take kindly to being woken up before dawn because her charge had a nightmare. But she might as well get up for the morning.

"Up in the morning, up in the evening, picking down clocks when the birds come out to eat, oh to eat…" The lyrics jumped into her head in time with her thoughts. She had discovered over the weeks that she couldn't sleep that Imagine Dragons was an effective way of staving off the inevitable crash from exhaustion. "Up on the mountain, down in the king's lair, pushing these blocks in the heat of the afternoon, oh afternoon. We were never welcome here; we were never welcome here at all…"

The events she hadn't dared to think about started resurfacing in her mind.

* * *

  _Meredith was washing tables, putting up chairs, carrying dishes into the restaurant of the kitchen. She'd only had this job for three months and she was happy for the extra shifts and meager tips. It all helped cover her rent at the apartment a few blocks away from Pratt Institute and put enough in savings that she might be able to afford to take a few classes there the next semester._

_But for now, it was work three jobs, taking as many extra shifts she could, save up so that she afford a future someday. That was the only thing that made the hour long commute worth it. And Niko wasn't a bad guy as bosses went._

_Meredith finished sweeping the floor and dumped the debris she had gathered into the garbage can. She tied the top of the bag and started toward the back door. It was a bit weird that she hadn't heard from Niko for a little while. Usually, the excitable man was wandering around, making sure that everything in his restaurant was perfect before he let the closing staff leave for the night. Tonight it was just her because Annie had a family emergency and David was "trapped" in a night class for midterms with a teacher who revealed that anyone who missed the midterm would not be able to get higher than a D in his class. Since they were short staffed, Niko had Meredith clean the front room while he took care of the kitchen._

_There was a damp sponge sitting on the counter beside the back door as she took the trash out to the dumpster. Before she tossed the bag into the large metal bin, she heard voices deeper in the alley._

_"Nikodim, you hurt me. Who gave you the money to keep this restaurant in operation? Who keeps you safe from the hoodlums on the streets?" The voice made Meredith stop in her tracks. Something about it sent a chill up and down her spine. "All I ask is that you repay me what I gave you."_

_"Mikhail, please…"_

_"I thought we were friends, brothers even. And then you spit in my face like this."_

_Meredith had the sudden feeling that she needed to see what was going on. She crouched down and scooted behind the dumpster, somehow managing to move it enough without alerting Niko or the other man to her presence._

_"I don't have the money right now. But I'll get it." Meredith managed to find a narrow field of vision through the boxes that shielded her from sight but let her see her boss and the man with him. Niko seemed to have aged at least five years in the hour since she had last seen him. "I can get it by the end of the week."_

_"Nikodim, I'm afraid that this cannot continue. Every month I come at the same time and ask for the same amount, and every month you claim you do not have it. My patience is at its end. You were my friend, Nikodim. I'm sorry you don't feel the same way."_

_"Mikhail, please, don't. I'll get the money—"_

_"I'm afraid that you're out of time and I've decided to cut my losses."_

_Whoever Mikhail was, he had his back to Meredith, so she didn't see what he had in his hand until the violent commotion of a gunshot filled the alley. With effort, she stifled her squeak of panic as she stared transfixed at her manager slumped against the back of the alley. Mikhail turned and she saw his face. It didn't look scared or upset or angry or like anything Meredith imagined it should look like considering he just killed a man. He was calm, perfectly collected as he wiped off the gun and tossed it into the dumpster. It clanged against the metal back and Meredith winced, still trying to contain the rising hysteria._

Commit his face to memory. Remember his hair, his eyes, remember that Niko called him Mikhail.

_His hair was the color of sand, just starting to go grey, and just enough volume to keep it from looking thin. He had blue eyes, that kind of arctic blue that made you shiver at the height of summertime... a curved scar on his left cheek that was too jagged to be a dimple, though it was in the right place…_ His eyes looked just the tiniest bit sad—I wonder if they really were friends.  _Broad, stocky build, wide shoulders, square face…_

_She ticked off the details, still hiding behind the dumpster until she was sure that he was gone. A car had picked him up—a black SUV with no distinguishing marks—and she crept from her hiding place, her hands shaking and her sense of safety shattered. She stepped back into the empty restaurant, fearing gunmen in every corner and a corpse in every shadow._

_Her mind started dredging up facts from high school psychology: the bystander effect, the tendency for people to forget defining characteristics of the perpetrators of violent crimes, the tendency for witnesses to replace characteristics they cannot remember with the features of celebrities… So many things could go wrong._

_Meredith locked up the restaurant and sat at the wrong bus stop to get home. She couldn't go home, not tonight. Busying her hands with the clasp on her bag was the only way to hide the fact that they were shaking. She willed the bus to arrive faster with each jagged breath._

_It was nearly midnight when Meredith stepped into a police precinct in the center of Brooklyn and up to the front desk._

" _Hello?" She said timidly, trying to draw the attention of the sergeant before attracting the eyes of anyone who might wish her harm. "I'd like to report a murder."_

* * *

 "It's who we are, doesn't matter if we've gone too far. Doesn't matter if it's all okay, doesn't matter if it's not our day. Won't you save us from what we are, don't look clear but it's all uphill from here…" The song was surprisingly accurate for Meredith's situation. The whirlwind of activity and hiding from potential hit-men had seemed unbearable at first, but every day was a battle. It hadn't been her day for a long time, and nothing had been okay since she had seen Mikhail Volkov gun down her manager in a back alley.

And then there was a line that made Meredith want to bury herself back in the blankets again.  _Coming back for more…_

A door opened and closed down the hall, causing the young woman to glance at the clock and see how much time she had lost in her recollections. A couple of hours at the least-it was just after six o'clock in the morning.

Detective Martinez knocked lightly on the door. "Time to get up. The bathroom is down the hall. If you need me, I'll be downstairs in the kitchen."

After a shower, Meredith was feeling more awake and the thought of testifying before a jury was less terrifying. Although the nightmares had returned, her terror was tempered, though by what she didn't want to theorize. She wandered down the stairs to the kitchen where Detective Martinez was nursing a cup of coffee.

"Good morning. I called my lieutenant, so she'll be expecting us when we get there."

"Okay." Meredith put a couple slices of toast on her plate and glanced around the room. There were a couple of empty wine bottle on the counter near the garbage can and a pile of dishes rose out of the sink. She ignored the instinctive desire to get up and wash them. "Should I bring my clothes?"

"Probably. The FBI might want to take you into protective custody and it doesn't hurt to be prepared."

As if the question was some unspoken request to leave, Detective Martinez put her coffee cup next to the sink and Meredith abandoned the last of her toast.

Outside the house, Meredith glanced around the street. It was a nice neighborhood for a police detective, better than the younger woman had actually been expecting. There was probably a story, but she didn't want to ask, and she doubted that Detective Martinez would want to tell.

Meredith noticed an unmarked van on the corner that started its engine shortly after the detective had pulled out into the street. After the first corner, she was suspicious; after the fourth, she was worried.

"Um…"

"I see it." Detective Martinez glanced in the rear-view mirror as the van started creeping closer. "I really hope you don't get car sick."

Meredith barely got a chance to see that someone was leaning out the window when the detective pushed her head down into her lap. The first few shots pinged against the trunk before one broke the back windshield.

"Stay down!"

Meredith had no desire to raise her head. She tucked in her arms and legs and prayed silently to whatever deity might be listening. She banged her head against the glove compartment as the car jolted from the impact of the van. Somewhere in the space above her, she heard Detective Martinez yelling into the radio about being under fire and needing backup.

"Don't worry, Meredith. I'm going to get you there in one piece. I just wish I knew how these bastards found us."

Meredith relaxed a little bit, feeling the car swerve under her as they wove through traffic to escape the van. If she believed in nothing else at that moment, she felt confident that the NYPD detective would keep her safe.

Just when Meredith was starting to think that maybe she was getting a little carsick, she heard the sirens of other police cars and felt the car slow down.

"You can sit up now. We're about a block from the precinct, and they took off when backup showed up."

Parking in the garage under the station, Detective Martinez turned to the younger woman. "Are you okay?"

"Y-yeah. I'm fine, detective."

"You can call me Jo. And it's okay not to be fine after all you've been through."

Meredith sucked in a deep breath and sat back against the seat with her eyes closed. "I'll survive." She gave Jo a wan smile that felt more like a grimace. The digesting toast in her stomach was rebelling against the motion it had just endured and she wanted nothing more than to curl up somewhere and fall asleep.

"We need to go meet with Lieutenant Reece. Maybe she will know how they found us. But first…" Jo went around to the trunk and pulled out a bullet-proof vest. "How about you put this on?"


	12. To Catch A Mole

Dr. Henry Morgan arrived at work only to learn that Detective Martinez had been involved in a shooting earlier that morning. This news was imparted to him by a frantic Lucas who had received no more information than that.

"Have you heard anything?" the younger medical examiner demanded, dropping his tools when Henry opened the door of the morgue. "They said that Martinez was attacked and I haven't heard anything else. They won't say what hospital, or if she's in a hospital. There hasn't been anyone by with a collection box. I'm pretty sure she's not dead because they would have brought her here, but…"

"Lucas, breathe!"

Henry watched his assistant suck in a deep lungful of air and open his mouth to start asking questions again. But before either man could say anything, Detective Mike Hanson tapped Henry on the shoulder.

"Lieutenant Reece wants us in her office. Now."

"How is Detective Martinez?" The question was weighing on Henry's mind and contributed to his motive for asking it. But he also had a feeling that Lucas wouldn't be able focus on work if he was still wondering about Jo. Better to get as much information up front as possible.

"Doc, this is Jo. She's fine. Mad as hell, but fine. She's with Reece."

Henry saw his young assistant relax out of the corner of his eye as he allowed himself a sigh of relief. He would not be losing another friend today, not if he could help it.

He followed Hanson to the elevator and they rode it up to Homicide. There was a surplus of people on the floor, and the immortal was certain that the many people clad in moderately expensive suits belonged to the FBI. They loitered in the halls, glancing every so often at the lieutenant's office door, which remained firmly closed.

_They're not allowed in. Jo must have told Lieutenant Reece about my theory, and one of them has confirmed it._

Of course Reece didn't suspect either he or Hanson of informing anyone who might wish Miss Keegan harm. Jo was above suspicion because she was nearly killed as well. Most damning for the members of the FBI that lingered among the desks of homicide detectives was that the lieutenant would not have shared Meredith's continued existence and location with the whole department; she would keep it among the people actually working the case—Jo, Hanson, Henry, and the FBI.

The door of the office opened as Henry and Detective Hanson drew closer and Lieutenant Reece ushered them inside.

"Henry, Jo was telling me that you thought there might be a mole in the investigation." Lieutenant Joanna Reece was a lot of things, but she was not someone who would avoid the heart of the matter.

"Yes."

"So talk. How did you know?"

Henry shifted uncomfortably. "Someone called me. I don't know his real name; I only know him as Adam, and he's not an acquaintance I want to keep."

It was the truth, at the very least. He wondered if anyone would put together this unwanted caller with the stalker he told them about before Christmas. He couldn't remember if he had actually mentioned that his stalker went by the name of Adam.

_No, I don't think so. I just said that he thought he was immortal. The greatest problem is that he is immortal, and he's also a master manipulator._

"Go on." The lieutenant betrayed no emotion—just that neutral expression that left everyone with the feeling that she was mildly disappointed in them.

"He mentioned the SUV we pulled out of the river. He made a point to indicate that he knew that Miss Keegan was not in the vehicle."

Detective Martinez was sitting in the corner with Meredith, who was tucked further in the corner behind filing cabinet and clad in a bullet proof vest that was a little too large for her. She flinched and turned away from the conversation. The death of her protectors was possibly still a little raw for her. Or she didn't want to mention that she might have been in the vehicle when it went under along with the marshals.

"He even knew that she was protected by federal marshals," Henry offered. "And that I was working that particular case, though that is hardly surprising given the attention he seems wont to give me."

The lieutenant sat down at her desk. "This is serious. We can't go accusing the FBI without proof of a mole, and the attack this morning doesn't count as proof. There are too many variables. You, Henry, knew about Miss Keegan's location last night, as did your roommate, I presume?"

"Actually, Abe knew where she was two days ago, though he didn't know exactly who she was."

"It's still enough to call any suspicions of corruption into question. No, we need something that stays between us, something we can use to prove that the leak is on their end."

* * *

Henry let the actual police take care of planning the trap, deciding instead to sit in the corner with Meredith.

"How are you holding up?" He asked, reading the terror in every line of her body.

She shrugged in the over-large Kevlar vest, pulling it around her like a security blanket. "I just want to get it all over with," she replied after a moment. "I thought I would just need to testify, and then I could start over again."

"What were you doing before all this happened?"

"Saving up so I could go to an art school. Taking all the extra shifts I could at work and shunting all the tips into my savings account. Then Nico—"

Henry placed a hand on her shoulder, pretending not to notice that she flinched under his touch. "It's alright if you can't talk about it."

The young woman seemed caught between leaning into the comfort he was offering and remaining closed off because it was safer for her that way.

The immortal allowed the touch of a smile to reach his face as he remembered saying the same thing to Detective Martinez shortly after they first met. "I'm the least judgmental person you'll ever meet."

Meredith started shaking, and Henry thought he had made her cry. The shaking devolved into a series of hysterical squeaks, but it wasn't until the unstoppable giggles that the medical examiner realized that Meredith was laughing.

"Does that line actually work?"

"Sorry?"

"I'm not friends with any pickup artists or anything, but I can't actually see that line working in any situation."

Henry frowned. "It's not supposed to be a pickup line."

"It sounds like one."

"It certainly cheered you up," Henry observed, as the young woman brushed the hair out of her face.

Meredith sat up straighter, still hiding behind the filing cabinet but finally relaxing a little more.

"Seriously, though. I will listen to anything you want to tell me. And I promise to reserve judgment."

Henry wanted the young woman to open up about her experience in the river. If she hadn't died, then there was something there—something unusual that had happened to spare her life. If she had died, then she and Henry had much more in common than either of them fully realized and understood.

"I just want things to go back to normal." She ran her fingers through her slightly tangled hair. "I want to go to school like I planned, bankrupt myself on student loans, survive off Top Ramen and charity. I want to be able to go to the library and not worry about someone around the corner who may or may not be trying to kill me. I want to have a job and earn enough money to pay back the people who have helped me. I want to sit for hours and talk to someone about existentialism and the meaning of life." She stopped and looked up, locking eyes with Henry. "I want to be able to live again."

"Where did you want to go to school?" Henry asked, not wanting to sabotage the chances of her opening up a little more by saying the wrong thing.

"Pratt Institute. I used to live a few streets away and I'd go to all their art exhibits, drama productions, even workshops when I had the time. I wanted to major in Fine Arts, with an emphasis on ceramics. Looks like that's not happening now."

"It still might."

"Well, maybe. But not in New York. When they say it's a small world, they mean it's a small world. And I can't count on whatever luck or incompetence is keeping me alive to keep doing that indefinitely."

_That's a strange way to say that._  "Have you thought about looking into schools elsewhere? On the West Coast, perhaps?"

"I've thought about it. I just haven't had a whole lot of time to actually do it yet."

"I hear that Portland, Oregon is becoming a center of art and culture…"

"And hipsters and weirdness." A smile finally made it to the corners of Meredith's mouth. "And actually that might be a nice change from the weirdness of New York. Now I just need a laptop and internet access to look up some schools."

"Perhaps I can arrange something…" Henry would have said more, but it appeared that the detectives were finishing their planning session.

"I'd like that, thank you." She said it like an afterthought, and Henry half turned back before he realized exactly what she had said.

_She's an incredibly unusual woman. I hope she finds an art school to her liking._

* * *

The plan was simple, and one of the oldest ones in the book: divide and conquer. Only the two most senior agents of the ten FBI who had gotten involved with the Volkov case would be told Meredith's true location. If an attempt was made to kill the girl at one of the fake locations, there would be enough evidence to let the FBI Internal Affairs people deal with the aftermath. If another attempt was made at the real location then, more frighteningly, they would need to deal with a high ranking FBI mole.

It was Meredith who determined Henry's role in the whole affair.

"I don't want to be in the safe house with someone I don't know. If all of you are going to monitoring different locations, can Dr. Morgan stay with me?"

There was a moment of silence among the detectives. Henry could see the amused gleam in Hanson's eyes at the request.

"Quite the charmer, Doc," he whispered. "What did you two talk about in the corner?"

"There are still going to be a couple of undercover units on the house." The immortal medical examiner could tell that Jo was trying to talk Meredith out of having him stay with her. "It will be perfectly safe."

"I know that. But if I had my choice, I'd ask if Abe could stay with me." Miss Keegan crossed her arms. "Dr. Morgan is already involved in the investigation. Is there any reason why he can't stay with me in the house? He's not my type, if that's what you're worried about."

Hanson attempted, quite poorly, to stifle a laugh.

Henry knew that he would be brought into the conversation.  _Better sooner than later._  "I can stay with her. It's really no problem."

"Why Henry?" Lieutenant Reece asked, using her straight-forwardness to her advantage. "Why do you want Dr. Morgan to stay with you?"

The young woman scratched her scalp, avoiding the eyes of everyone in the room. "No offense, but it seems like you treat me as a job first and a person second. And Henry didn't do that. He asked me about my life and what I wanted to do. I want him there because I want to feel like a person again."

There was silence for another few moments. Then everyone agreed that Henry could go with Meredith to the safe house.

* * *

Jo insisted on being the one to drive Meredith and Henry over to the secret location. The immortal decided to take the opportunity to speak with her.

"Detective Martinez, are you certain this is quite safe?" It wasn't that Henry at all doubted the ability of the detectives or the precautions they were taking in this. His mind was more caught on the idea that, if he did die, it would be rather difficult to explain why he disappeared and reappeared alive shortly after.

"Safe? Henry, you've walked in front of moving cars before to stop people from getting away and you're worried about safety now?" Jo glanced into the backseat at Meredith, who was still wrapped in her Kevlar vest. "You'll be fine. Both of you. We have several precautions in place to ensure your safety. Don't worry."

_I wish I could be as certain as you, Detective._

The safe house was buried in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. There was nothing truly special about it. The immortal could tell that it was well tended from the colorful flowers spilling over the edges of the window boxes.

"How quaint. Do all police safe houses look like this? If so, I must stay in more of them." Henry was only half joking—it was a very nice house in a quiet neighborhood.

"Well, you better stay in this one for now." In a voice low enough to ensure that Meredith would not overhear them, the detective whispered, "Be careful. And take care of her. Put all that hidden recklessness to work for once."

"Don't worry," Henry assured her as he closed the door of the house. "I'm sure we'll be fine."


	13. Patience is a Virtue, Impatience is an Itch

The first thing Meredith did when Detective Martinez dropped them off at the safe house was go through all the rooms, closing windows and curtains as she went. It was a ritual she had learned from the US marshals, something to keep her safe from prying eyes and snipers on rooftops. But there hadn't been a ritual for the car. No one—least of all, Meredith—had expected the route to the courthouse to be compromised and for the vehicle and its passengers to take a dip in the river before dawn.

There were moments when she stopped, when the whole world seemed to stop and she was reliving that sensory nightmare. The cacophony of clashing metal and the screech of brakes applied too late, the burst of white pain when her head collided with auto glass and the ringing in her ears that came seconds later… And then the world would start moving again—slowly, like a carousel starting to move forward with the tiny, mechanical, stop-go up-down jolts as the ring of animals fought against inertia.

And in this small space of the world was Dr. Morgan. Meredith had never been very good at reading people outside of books, but the medical examiner seemed an especially difficult enigma to unravel. For every question he asked her, she could almost sense another that he wasn't asking for whatever reason.

He was sitting in the corner with a book he had plucked from a nearby shelf. It was the first time she had gotten a chance to observe him, instead of the other way around. There was a vivacious kind of stillness around him, something that Meredith had never seen before. Most people couldn't stop moving; even when they were trying to stand still, they'd fidget or have some other kind of physical tick that was restless and kept them in perpetual motion.

But not Dr. Henry Morgan. He could have been a statue if she couldn't see that he was breathing and turned the page every few minutes. And he looked far too alive to have been carved by any sculptor.

Meredith walked over to the bookcase, trying to find something interesting for her to read. There were four whole shelves of romance novels.

_What sort of people do they normally have in this house? Who in God's name would want to read formulaic soft-core porn?_

She moved to another shelf. Murder mysteries.  _Not if I can help it. That's hitting a little too close to home._  On the next shelf, there were a few books on criminal justice and several on forensic science. The blank spot in the middle of these told the young woman what type of book Dr. Morgan was reading.

_Whoever stocked this library must be allergic to Science Fiction, the good space opera, adventure Science Fiction._  She glanced back at the shelves of calculated mush.  _Those sci-fi romances do not count._

Meredith gave up on finding a book and went instead into the kitchen. At least stocking the pantry wasn't something they could screw up very easily. Living with the US marshals had taught her something—people who are hiding for their lives are often given certain indulgences in the safe houses, usually in the form of ice cream, chocolate, or other such inexpensive delicacies. She had even been offered various kinds of alcohol, but preferred to avoid discovering how her body responded to it.

Scrounging what she could from the refrigerator and pantry, Meredith made herself a sandwich and settled down in a chair in the living room to flip through a cookbook she'd found in one of the kitchen cupboards.

* * *

A few hours later, the silence was starting to get to her. Reading cookbooks wasn't really all that interesting.

"Screw it. Why America?"

At first, it didn't seem like Dr. Morgan had heard her. He glanced up from his book.

"I'm terribly sorry. Were you speaking to me?"

"Yeah. Why would you come to America when the UK has Doctor Who and Sherlock? Haven't you ever thought about going back?"

Meredith watched him close the book and set it aside on the end table beside his chair. Even though he seemed a little surprised by her question, he never once lost that innate grace.  _And here I trip over my own feet…_

"I have gone back. A few times anyway. But it's changed quite a bit."

"How much could it have changed? You can't be older than forty," she pointed out. "It can't have changed that much."

For a moment, Dr. Morgan looked a little guilty. But the expression lasted barely a moment before he replaced it with a smile. "You'd be surprised how much can change in such a short period of time."

Meredith held up a hand. "You don't need to lecture me on changes. Life has done enough of that."

"Life has a way of doing that."

She looked at the man. He confused her. He didn't look that much older than she was, but there were times that he said things that made it seem like he was a hundred years old.  _BBC America may not be the best ruler, but I don't think that it's all because he's British. He acts like he walked out of Victorian England._

"So…" she tried and failed to find a good way to change the subject. "Why become a medical examiner? Am I going to regret asking this?"

"I hope not. I became a medical examiner because I was always fascinated by forensic science, and discovering cause of death is kind of like a puzzle. I do the same job that Detective Martinez does, but on a microscopic scale. I look for clues within a body, physiological effects of their cause of death, and I put them together to determine the precise method by which they were killed. The cause, in conjunction with the time of death, become pieces in the larger puzzle that Martinez and Hanson are putting together." He stopped. "I'm not boring you, am I?"

"No. One of the only ways you can actually bore me is to start quoting tax law."

"I don't think I have ever found myself in a situation where I begin quoting taxation laws in the middle of casual conversation. I doubt I would start now, as that would be highly impolite."

"Should I make dinner soon? I'm not actually hungry—at least I don't think so—but I feel like eating something. Maybe I just want something to occupy my mouth..."

"Dinner would be lovely."

Meredith stood up to go to the kitchen and start preparing a meal. Her head jerked up suddenly as she heard a rattling at the back door.

The medical examiner grabbed Meredith's arm and pulled her into the corner behind him. Peeking around his shoulder, she saw the suit crossing through the kitchen.

"Miss Keegan?" The voice called. "Are you alright?"

The man entered the living room and Dr. Morgan moved so that he completely blocked the young woman from view.

"Oh, Dr. Morgan! I'm Agent Derick Forester." Meredith saw him as he craned his neck to get a glimpse of her. "Good evening, Miss Keegan."

"What are you doing here?" she demanded. "I was under the impression that there were plain clothes officers outside making sure that no one comes in here."

"They told me to go in through the back door to protect your location. I have reason to believe that my superior is the mole and he's on his way here to kill you."

Meredith stiffened. She wanted to make dinner and end this horrible day with something normal.  _Looks like that isn't going to happen…_  "So what exactly are we supposed to do? Are we moving locations?"

Agent Forester peeked through the curtains at the front of the house. "I don't think we have time. Quick, into the basement."

The young woman paused for a moment. She had explored all the rooms briefly when they had arrived, but it was difficult to remember which door had the basement stairs behind them through the panic that clouded her mind. Rushing into the kitchen, she opened the door of the broom closet before she rediscovered the cellar.

She nearly tripped down the stairs in the darkness and the mad rush. It wasn't so much that she feared for her life; the thought of Mikhail Volkov going free to kill again drove her into a state of mind she didn't like or fully understand. It was like she had turned into a self-obsessed coward.

She reached for the light switch.

"No, wait! Leave it off! Maybe we can trick him into thinking that this is another decoy. Hide somewhere in the dark, and maybe he'll think the house is completely empty."

Henry turned to the man, who was still at the top of the stairs. "How are we supposed to find a hiding place if we can't see anything?"

Agent Forester's head snapped in the direction of one of the doors. "Just do it! I think he's coming!"

The door at the top of the stairs closed, shutting out the only light that entered that dark space. There were no windows in the cramped and stuffy place. Suddenly the darkness, which had always been comforting to Meredith, seemed to become something oppressive and sinister.

"Dr. Morgan, are you still near the stairs?"

"Yes. Why?"

Meredith shivered. "Could you turn on the light?"

The lightbulb flickered, then steadied, and they both glanced around the foreign space. Meredith wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for, if anything.

"There." The medical examiner pointed to something concealed up in the support beams. "I think it's a bomb."

Meredith scanned along the beams. "There's more than one." She pointed out two more situated along different beams.  _Possibly enough to bring the whole house down on top of us._  She took the stairs two and three at a time, and banged on the door. "Agent Forester! There are explosives down here."

She tried ramming her shoulder in it—she even tried kicking it—but she lost her balance and tumbled down the stairs into Dr. Morgan's arms.

"At least we know who the informant is."

Meredith glanced over her shoulder at the medical examiner as she ascended the stairs to try again. "That information isn't going to do us a hell of a lot of good if we're dead!"

She battered the door until her hands stung, yelling for help from anyone. But the house beyond remained silent. She turned back to the doctor. "Where's your cellphone?"

"I don't have one."

"Why don't you have a cellphone?"

"I don't really like them. Why don't  _you_  have a cellphone?"

"Getting a new cellphone wasn't high on my list of priorities when I have 'testify before a grand jury' and 'stay alive' on there." She kicked the door one last time. "My phone was taken when I was handed over to the marshals. I was told that I wouldn't be able to contact anybody from my previous life in order to keep them safe and me alive. Not liking them is not a legitimate reason, why don't you have a cellphone?"

"I never use those infernal devices. I can usually be reached at my home or office."

Meredith gave him a skeptical look as she ventured back down the bottom of the basement. She glanced uneasily at the beams. "Why haven't they gone off yet?"

"Perhaps Agent Forester is trying to get to a safe distance," Dr. Morgan offered. "Or perhaps they are on a timer."

"I don't suppose you know how to defuse a bomb, Dr. Morgan."

He shook his head. "Please, call me Henry."

"Henry…" The name felt strange in her mouth. She had used his first name only once before, but that was in order to make a point and there were very few people that she was comfortable addressing by their first name. It didn't help that the one of last ones had died.  _And it's going to happen again. I'm going to die this time for sure…_  "I don't want to die."

Meredith tried to avoid looking at the bombs. Maybe if she didn't look at them, she could convince herself that they weren't there. She flinched when Henry touched her arm.

"I'm almost certain that everything is going to be fine. You're going to be okay."

It was sweet. She would have hugged him if the bombs hadn't decided to take that moment to drop the house on them.


	14. They Call It Awkwardness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My first late posting ever! Sorry. At least it's only late by one day...  
> School started this week, so I couldn't spend as much time on it as I wanted.

Henry's life flashed before his eyes…again. There was no way that he would forget his long life since he was reminded every time he died. He broke the surface of the water gasping, shivering in the chilly waters of the East River at night. Another floundering splash reminded him that an unfortunate side effect of dying was appearing naked in the water.

"What the hell just happened?" Meredith spluttered, treading water a few meters away.

"Perhaps we should get to shore before I explain." Henry avoided looking at the young woman, well aware of the fact that there was not a stitch on her either.

He almost turned back when he heard her emit a high pitched shriek.

"Don't look!" She wailed hysterically. "Where are my clothes? And what about yours?"

"You need to calm down. We both need to get to shore before we develop hypothermia." He resisted the urge to turn and try to calm her down himself. At this point, any action toward her on his part might cause the situation to devolve into an actual arrest, not merely a reprimand for public nudity.

He started swimming in the direction of the shore instead, pausing long enough to verify that she was following him. Once he reached an area where his feet could touch the bottom, he waited in the shoulder deep water for her.

"Now what?" The water lapped at her throat, something he should have expected considering the fact that he was taller than her. Water that was shoulder deep for him would be deeper measured against someone smaller than he was.

"Ideally, we find something to cover ourselves with before any police officers happen by. Then we get to a phone and call Abraham. He can bring some clothes and get us somewhere safe."

Henry couldn't help but notice the look she sent his way. "That's it? We wander around the park stark naked, hoping to find something to cover ourselves will before we get caught, killed, or sexually assaulted? How often does this plan actually work."

The immortal medical examiner was about to respond when he saw a figure appear on the shore. At first, he thought it was Abraham, having heard of his apparent demise from the police. Instead...

"Well, Henry. We always meet in the strangest of circumstances."

The cold, emotionally detached voice made the East River in mid-autumn seem warm. Henry moved to put himself between Adam and Meredith. "What are you doing here?"

"That's no way to thank someone who came to save you after your most recent death." Adam smiled. "I come bearing clothes for the both of you."

"So you knew this was going to happen." Henry prided himself on reserving judgment, but around Adam, accusation bled through his voice.

"Of course I knew it was going to happen. I make a point of knowing if something like this is going to happen. What do you think I have done for fun these past few centuries? Besides, if I had played the part of the paladin that you wanted me to play, I would not have been able to meet Miss Keegan, who is currently cowering behind you."

"Hey!" The young woman's voice rang out behind him. "I am NAKED! Don't you think I might want to preserve my modesty?"

"In our situation, modesty is the least of our problems. However, the minor issue of your nudity can be solved before you draw the decadent mortals within earshot with your overreaction."

With a strangled squeak, she waded as quickly as she could through the water and snatched a towel and a set of clothing from Adam's outstretched hand. "Don't look," she hissed, rather belatedly Henry thought. Though the medical examiner had turned away for the sake of propriety, Adam must have gotten a full frontal view of the woman as she made her way out of the river.

"Henry," he heard Adam call. "You'll never get home to explain all this to Abraham if you stay in the water."

It was a fair point, but Henry hated it when the older immortal brought his son into the conversation. While Adam had promised never to harm Abe, there was more than enough evidence that Adam could not be trusted. This was not how he wanted any of this to happen.

_At least Miss Keegan is developing a healthy dislike of Adam and his methods._

"Let me get this straight," she seethed. "You knew that someone was going to try to kill us before we actually got killed. Then you just sat on this until we died so you could meet me? What if I actually stayed dead?"

"Then you wouldn't have been a very interesting person to meet."

"You make the worst first impression I have ever had the displeasure of being a part of."

Adam smiled. "If any of those terrible television sitcoms are to be believed, this is the start of an enduring friendship."

Henry was surprised that Meredith moved to stand beside him muttering unspeakable things under her breath. Then she turned to him.

"You promised that once we got to the shore you would explain." She glowered over her shoulder at Adam. "I'm assuming that he comes into this, somewhere."

"Could we perhaps relocate before we begin that conversation?"

"Certainly, Henry." The tone in Adam's voice was mocking. "I believe there's a quiet secluded space with a Peter Pan statue somewhere around here. Will that work? Only four paths converge there."

"That'll work." When Dr. Morgan turned to look at Meredith, she was striding along the pathways in the direction of the little garden. Then she stopped. Apparently she remembered who had suggested the location. "As long as there aren't any traps or ambushes waiting there."

"Don't be ridiculous. What would be the point of all the effort I put into providing you with clothes if I was just going to kill you again?" Adam flashed her a tight smile. "Besides, I want to see how Henry manages the explanation this time."

Henry didn't like the implication in Adam's tone, that he had mismanaged the explanation of immortality at some point. The time spent at Bedlam screamed in his head, reminding him that he had failed at least once, perhaps when it had been most important.  _Nora…_

_But this isn't like that at all,_  he mused.  _It doesn't require proof outside of her own experiences and she's probably intelligent enough to consider the possibility._

It wasn't that he thought his first wife Nora was not an intelligent person; the era was simply not conducive to the inexplicable. But perhaps Meredith would be open-minded…

"Don't forget to stay close to the river," Henry called to the other two immortals. "Abraham will probably be along soon to pick us up."

* * *

 Detective Jo Martinez stared at the remains of the safe house. When she first arrived, she thought she had already passed the house. When Lieutenant Reese said that there had been another attempt, apparently successful, she had expected the house to still be standing. She expected that they would have left Henry alone. She should have known better; after all, they were trying to kill Meredith, and she had merely witnessed another murder.

There was a hole where the house used to be, a hole filled with the rubble of a house that had been completely destroyed.

_How very neat, removes all the evidence, makes sure that the people inside can't survive. Certainly not for very long, anyway._  She sighed.  _Henry could find something to pin on the murderer…_

She kicked idly at one of the larger pieces of debris that might have been a support beam or a rafter when the house was still a house.

"Someone has to tell Abe," Jo muttered. She dreaded him hearing about Henry's demise from someone who didn't know the old man or the medical examiner, someone who could offer no comfort to Abe for his loss.

She didn't hear Hanson behind her until he spoke. "I can't believe he's really gone. I mean, Henry did a lot of things more dangerous than staying with a witness: jumping in front of cars, climbing over the guardrail of a bridge, confronting that kid that killed the professor. It was like he couldn't die."

Jo looked at her partner, not really seeing him. "I need to call Abe. Can you take care of things?"

"Sure."

She turned away, taking out her phone and dialing the number of the antiques shop. It rang twice before Abe picked up the phone.  _Must be a slow day._

"Hello, Abe's Antiques. Abe speaking."

_Oh god, he doesn't know. He doesn't suspect anything._  "Abe, this is Jo. I—there's been an accident."

"What? Is Henry there?"

"N-no. I'm afraid—I mean, we think he might—might be…dead."  _Not again. Not another person I care about…_

"What? Are you sure? Is there a body?"

"I want to believe that he's alive, too, but the house he was in collapsed." Jo was beginning to wonder why she had decided to make this call. It was harder than she thought it would be. "Fire and Rescue crews are sifting through the rubble, but there's not a lot of hope."

"I have to go," Abe said suddenly. "I—I need time to process things."

The haggard NYPD detective sighed. "If you need me, you know how to get in touch with me."

The line disconnected and Jo looked back at the remains of the house.  _I still can't believe that Henry's just…gone._

* * *

 Abe hung up the phone and began gathering things as quickly as he could.

_Two sets of clothing, in case Henry was right about Meredith being immortal. I don't have time to go up and find some of Mom's old clothes._

A sudden realization made Abe stop in his tracks.

"Henry might have to leave because of this. We might have to run again."

It wouldn't actually be that hard. Henry was always prepared to leave at a moment's notice in case anything untoward happened and his secret was revealed. This kind of situation wasn't exactly something that could be solved by fighting back.

And if someone picked Henry up at the river, naked, when he was supposedly dead in the remains of a safe house, it would raise some awkward questions that Henry wouldn't be able to answer very easily.

It was now very important for Abe to get to the river before Henry got caught.

* * *

 "So this is going to happen every time I die?" Meredith asked after Henry explained the nature of immortality. "Well, that's…inconvenient."

The medical examiner smiled. "Yes, it's caused more than a few awkward situations on my part. And a few jokes at my expense."

"It didn't use to be a problem," Adam put in. "Suddenly mortals have some idea of propriety and returning to life becomes indecent. In the days of the Roman Empire, nakedness was expected in the rivers. That's where the common people went to bathe."

"Yes, thank you for the history lesson. How old are you, exactly?"

"Old enough to stop caring about the banal existence of mortals and their concerns."

Henry was proud of the way Meredith sighed and said, "May I never become as jaded as you."

In the distance, he could hear a familiar voice.

"Henry? Come on, I'm not too late, am I?"

Abe was hurrying down the main path, past the Peter Pan Garden.

"Abraham," Henry called. "We're over here."

He glanced back at Meredith and Adam.  _Not exactly the company I normally keep after coming back from the dead._

"I think it's time for me to go. See you again soon, Henry." Adam disappeared down one of the paths as Abe turned back in Henry's direction.

Before Abe had gotten close enough to hear her, Meredith whispered, "How much does Abe know? About you, I mean."

"Everything. Abraham is my son. He's known for quite a while now."

"Oh. Hi, Abe." Henry saw as she shifted uncomfortably, moving her arms unconsciously to cover herself.

"Oh, good. I was hoping to find you before the police. Wait, why do you have clothes?"

Henry ran his fingers through his damp hair. "Adam was here. He brought clothes for Meredith and I."

"Ah. Have you put any thought into what you're going to tell Jo. She called me and told me that you were dead, buried under a couple stories of rubble. You'll need something pretty god to convince her that you didn't just die and come back. No matter how truthful that may be."

As soon as they got home, Henry called Jo and she arrived at the antique shop, pale faced and wild hair. She strode across the shop and embraced the immortal man.

"What the hell is wrong with you? I thought you were dead and you call me now?" Her voice was gradually going up in pitch. "Don't do this to me. How the hell did you survive?"

"It was my fault," Meredith put in. "I saw the bombs and I ran. We weren't even in the house when it blew up."

"Yes." This was the story they had discussed in the car on the way home. "I went after her. I only caught up with Miss Keegan a little while ago and I called Abraham to bring us here. Then I called you."

"I've been under the impression that you died under the wreckage of the safe house. For four hours! You didn't think that I might need to know that you—BOTH OF YOU—were still alive."

"If it makes you feel any better, Detective Martinez, we know who the mole is now." Meredith crossed her arms and sat down in one of the antique chairs. "It's Agent Derick Forester. He came by to gloat."

"Why wouldn't you call me?"

Henry stepped in. "It seems that neither of us have a cell phone."

"Top of my to-do list. Especially after all this." Meredith grabbed a jacket from the coat rack. "Right after I testify."

"Okay, fine, whatever. But you can't stay here, just in case. You're going back into protective custody until the trial tomorrow." Jo ran a hand over her hair, smoothing the wild strands down again. "Abe, Henry, I'll probably see you tomorrow."


	15. Time to Say Goodbye

Meredith stood outside the small corner shop known as Abe's Antiques.  _Last chance to do this._

She pushed open the door and the bell jingled above her.

"Hello? Abe?"

The aging man stepped out from behind a large wardrobe. "Right here. Oh, Meredith. I thought you were on a plane headed to inhabit a new identity."

"Not quite yet." She smiled. "I know they said that I can't say goodbye to anyone in my old life, but you aren't part of my old life, so it'll probably be okay."  _Yes, for me, old life and new life are split at that first death._

"So this is it, then? Goodbye? I suppose you'll want to see Henry before you go."

"Yeah. I wanted to thank him for telling me what was going on, how all this was possible. Um, is he here?"

"Unfortunately not. He should be back soon, but he's still at work at the moment." Abe stepped to the side and gestured to the stairs. "Would you like to come up for a cup of tea?"

The bell above the door rang again.

"I thought I might find you here." The voice sent a chill up Meredith's spine—a familiar one.

"Adam," Meredith remarked without turning around. "I was actually hoping to miss you on my way out of New York."

She flashed the ancient Roman a tight smile, which he returned.

"Yes, well, if I hadn't met you before you left, I would follow you to Portland."

Meredith froze, her vital functions caught on the name of a city on the West Coast.

"You aren't supposed to know that!"

"Oh, please. You spent two years living within three blocks of the Pratt Institute. It was hardly a stretch to assume that you would go to Portland, a city of art schools, and that you plan to attend the Oregon College of Art and Craft."

Meredith caught the amused look in Abe's eyes as she blew up at the other immortal. "It's called Witness Protection! You aren't supposed to know where I'm going or what I'm doing. How did you even get that kind of information?"

"I have an excellent source."

"At least you aren't going to do much with the information. I'm probably the only one in the Witness Protection Program that can hold your interest for an extended period of time."

Adam flashed a cold smile. "I might start examining the information a little bit more, especially considering that I have now discovered you." He glanced behind the youngest immortal and sighed. "As amusing as it would be to see Henry right now, I did not come here for him."

"Am I your new favorite person to stalk? Henry told me about some of the stunts you pulled."

Abe kept glancing between the clock and the street outside.  _He must be expecting Henry home any time soon._

"I have no idea what you are talking about. I just came to give you something." He pulled a small package out of an inner pocket and gave it to the young woman.

Meredith eyed the box with suspicion. "It's a little small for an explosive, but I'm not putting anything past you."

"Just open it." For a moment, Adam let a little bit of human frustration peek through his unfeeling mask.

The little package was not embellished in any way. It was just a small gift box, the same kind of box that earrings or watches came in. At first glance, there was only a card sitting in a bed of cotton. It read: To avoid awkward situations while living on the West Coast. Meredith could feel the look of confusion contorting her face as she looked back at the cotton. She lifted it and found a small key.

"What's this for?"

Adam smiled as he stepped toward the door. "I'm sure you'll figure that out after you have gotten settled in. You'll know it when you see it."

He left the antique shop like the last sweeping edge of a hurricane blowing out to sea, leaving disaster and confusion in his wake.

"I am never going to get used to that man." Meredith shook herself, trying to brush the whole experience off.

"You may not have to; he seems more interested in Henry."

"God help Henry. Now about that tea…"

* * *

Meredith was nursing a second cup of mint medley around the time that Henry was to home. Abe had answered the phone earlier and announced that Jo would be accompanying Henry home.

"So...she doesn't know, does she?"

"About Henry?" Abe chuckled, "No, but not for lack of prodding, and guilt. And a dose of truth. I keep telling him that she needs to know, that I won't always be there for him, but he won't listen."

The bell above the front door echoed up the stairs.

"Abraham?" Dr. Morgan's voice floated into the sitting room.

"Up here, Henry."

Two sets of footsteps ascended the stairs and Meredith watched as Henry and Jo's hair appeared over the banister.

"Whoa," she whispered to herself. "Déjà vu."

Dr. Morgan stopped at the top of the staircase, graciously moving aside to let Detective Martinez past, when he saw the other immortal sitting on his couch.

"Ms. Keegan. I was under the impression that you would be on a flight out of New York today." Henry nevertheless inclined his head in greeting as if he was tipping an invisible hat.

"Tomorrow, actually. No one wanted to get up and meet me at 5:30 in the morning if I flew out tonight. They seem to have no qualms about getting me up at 4:30 in order to make a 9am flight, though. Gotta love airport security."

"Should you really be here, though?" Jo asked. "I realize that the trial is over, but is it safe for you to be wandering around without protection?"

 _For some reason, I feel like she's more concerned about Henry than me…_  "I should be fine. Especially since my death wouldn't benefit anyone now."  _Not that I can actually die,_ Meredith smiled wryly. "At this point, my relocation is more a formality than a necessity. At least in my mind."

"Are you staying for dinner, then?" Henry asked as he hung up his coat and scarf. "Abraham promised to make spaghetti this evening."

"He already asked me to stay, and I already accepted." The young immortal chuckled, "I'm going to start taking some college courses. What kind of a college student would I be if I turned down free food?"

* * *

 After the meal, Jo offered Meredith a ride back to the hotel room she was staying in until her flight.

"After all," the detective added. "You said you need to be up before dawn."

"Yeah, I know. Seriously, no one knows that better than I do. I'll be fine; I can sleep on the plane. Besides, I want to talk to Henry for a bit."

"Okay…" Detective Martinez didn't look convinced, but she left anyway with a jingle of her keys.

"What do you wish to talk to me about?" Dr. Morgan asked, mild confusion and surprise appearing on his face.

"Adam."

"Ah. I see. What has he done this time?"

Meredith pulled the little box out of her pocket it. She looked at it, then up at Henry, then back down to the box. "He gave me a key. He said I'd know what it's for when I saw it."

"That sounds like him, cryptic to the point of utter confusion. May I see it?"

She took the key out of the box and handed it to Henry. "Here. I would say it's endearing that he was thinking of me and got me a going away present. On the other hand, the very idea of a gift from Adam is genuinely frightening."

"It looks like a key for a padlock. Where, I have no idea, but it almost certainly has a padlock to open somewhere."

"Considering it's Adam, I probably have to die to figure it out, though."

Henry handed the key back to the young woman. "I wish I could say that would surprise me, but Adam's version of generosity falls miserably short of the definition."

"I guess I'd better be going now. I do have to get up at four in the morning." She stood up from the table and was immediately enveloped in a hug from Abraham.

 _I forgot how much I like hugs_ , she mused as she squeezed back.

"Be safe," Abe advised. "And don't be afraid to enjoy every minute of your immortality. Just…don't abuse it."

"I won't." Meredith stepped away and glanced at Henry. "It was nice getting to know you." She held out her hand. "Maybe I'll come back and look you up in a few years."

"It was a pleasure to meet you as well, Miss Keegan." Henry accepted her hand and shook it. "I wish you luck in all your endeavors."

Abe walked her to the door and took the opportunity to get one last hug before she slipped outside.

"Bye." Meredith waved, but the word came out as barely more than a whisper. She had the acute sense that she was losing something as she walked down the dark streets in the cool evening air.

If staying in New York had even been a remote possibility, she would have done it. She would have stayed and gotten to know Abe and Henry—and even Adam. She would have gone out for drinks with Detective Martinez, slipped back into her life with a whisper and picked up where she'd been so rudely interrupted.

But she was going to Portland, a city that actually did sleep, unlike New York. She'd be butting heads with hipsters, hanging out in hole-in-the-wall coffee shops on slam poetry night, and staying up until 3 in the morning to finish a homework assignment for a 7am class. But she could find a home there, the way Henry and Abe had found a home in New York. Maybe she could find someone she wanted to share her greatest secret with.

She would step into that new life tomorrow as easily as stepping off the plane. And suddenly, for the first time in her life, a world of possibility was opening up ahead of her. Suddenly, she was free.


	16. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BY POPULAR DEMAND, I GIVE YOU AN EPILOGUE

Meredith had been in Portland for a few months now. She had settled into college life and had a small job on the side to cover any unforeseen expenses. But it was cheaper living there than living in New York.

She had started writing to Abe and Henry, nice longhand letters written on tacky notebook paper because she couldn’t write in a straight line to save her life. _At least that’s not a problem anymore._ She promised herself that she would invest in stationary—especially after the first letter came from Henry on thick, unlined paper, his script calligraphy spanning the length of the page with practiced ease in difficult to produce straight lines.

“Ugh. He’s the perfect one, Adam’s the crazy one, and I’m the new one. Fantastic, I love being the baby of the family.” _If it’s a family…_

Meredith’s stomach complained loudly, and she realized that it was nearly 11pm and she hadn’t made dinner for herself. She knew that there was only a third of a jar of mayonnaise, a half of a gallon of milk, some pasta that had been in there longer than she could remember and a heel of a loaf of bread in the refrigerator. “Well, if you want to stop being a baby,” she told herself, “you better go and get something so you can feed yourself.”

She checked her bag to make sure that her keys and wallet were in it before she stepped out into the brisk late night air.

She didn’t live in the best part of town, but then, she hadn’t really expected to. Her only real complaint was that the streetlights would flicker on and off as if they weren’t getting enough power to stay on. It was eerie to walk around at night and suddenly have the lights go out.

They cut out as she was crossing the street which by itself wasn’t that bad because she could still see the convenience store lights on the other side. No, things started going wrong when the car careened around the corner.

Meredith barely had enough time to register the LED headlights and think, _Oh no, not again,_ before the vehicle hit her and sent her flying through the air. She made a conscious effort to hold onto her purse because Henry had told her that everything on her—her clothes, her purse, any jewelry she had on—would go back to her home, leaving no evidence that an accident had happened other than the dent in the guy's hood.

Her body vanished before it hit the pavement and the lights flickered back on.

* * *

"Hah! Ahh! COLD, coldcoldcoldcold. Yeow, this is not the time of year to be tossed into the Willamette."

Meredith started swimming for the nearby shore and she felt the blood leave her extremities at record speeds.

There was a small structure standing just beyond the shoreline and she prayed that it would unoccupied and open. Wind and water and the lack of clothing did not go well with a human body and she had no desire to get hypothermia from coming back to life.

She scrambled up the rock-strewn shore, scraping her hands and feet on the wet stones in the dark. But the dim light of the moon and distant street lamps, she read the sign on the little shed.

_Knew you would forget the key the first time. Check here. --Adam_

"Smug bastard," she muttered more to herself than to her imaginary audience.

It took her a few minutes of frustration in which she seriously considered trying to walk home naked before she realized that the capital "A" in "Adam", didn't have a serif at the bottom; it had a tiny arrow. Following the trail to a large rock, she lifted it up to find a copy of the key she had attached to her keychain, right next to her house key.

She used the key on the large padlock that held the door closed and the door swung inward with a soft creak.

"That's no ominous at all."

By the moonlight, she spied a small battery powered lantern. Flicking it on, the small shed was illuminated with bluish-white light.

"Okay, so the smug, controlling bastard plans ahead."

The inside of the little shack looked like someone was squatting there, except it was cleaner than she thought it would be. Clothes were carefully packed away in containers to protect them from the damp so close to the river. There was a small box of non-perishable food from which she plucked a package of crackers and another of beef jerky to satisfy the hunger that twisted in her gut.

“It’s actually a nice little setup,” Meredith admitted aloud, though it was a bit of a challenge to do so. To admit that Adam had done something so selfless was to strain credulity. The words “Adam” and “helpful” didn’t go together, especially when the solution didn’t involve murder in the first degree.

But there were bus passes and emergency cash and vouchers for various fast food places that are open late. There were a number of pairs of shoes lined up against the wall and a nearby container held socks. Various kinds of jackets hung on a bar jutting out of the wall, ranging from a puffy winter parka to a thin sweater to be worn in a stiff wind in the height of summer.

By now, it was well after midnight and any hope of catching the last bus home was gone.

And Adam had prepared for that, too. A small army cot was propped inconspicuously in the corner of a space already expertly crammed with necessities. But for the lack of a kitchen and bathroom, Meredith was tempted to just move into the small shack and save the money she was currently using to pay rent.

It was harder than it should have been to talk herself out of that notion while she burrowed down into the blankets that were kept in a plastic container conveniently near the cot.

“Tomorrow,” she said, to fill up the silence and get her priorities straight. “I need to re-hide the keys for this place. I should tell Henry about all this. And Abe. I think they’ll be glad that Adam’s going away present didn’t kill me, though I was right about needing to die to get it. I should also find out if anyone witnessed anything back at home and what happened to the guy who hit me…”

Her words devolved into exhausted mutterings and, finally, gentle breathing. She smiled ever so slightly in the midst of her dreams, but couldn’t remember them the next morning as she made her way home.

**Author's Note:**

> Please do leave reviews. I welcome feedback of all kinds. I am part dragon, so I will survive any flames.


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